Payback
by hiyoris-scarf
Summary: The second time he spoke to Hiyori Iki was a full week after their first conversation. The bus had just dropped her off at the end of the street. She waved at him and said: "It's Yato, isn't it?" That was when he had fallen in love with her. (written for the noragami big bang 2k18)
1. The Pizza

"Honey, I'm home!"

Yato kicked the door inward with more force than was entirely necessary and stumbled inside, burdened under the weight of four pizza boxes. Yukine appeared, scowling, at the end of the hallway. He eyed the boxes with distaste, not offering any help as Yato struggled to close the door behind himself.

"First off," Yukine said, "I would really like it if you stopped saying that every single time you came in. And second…pizza? Again?"

Yato snorted, edging his way into the tiny kitchen to drop the boxes with a thud on top of a pile of notebooks. Kazuma, who was deeply engaged in his textbook at the same table, barely looked up in acknowledgement.

"You should be grateful!" Yato complained, opening the top box. "At least these aren't burnt."

Yukine approached the table to sniff inquisitively, while Yato passed into the equally tiny living room to dump his messenger bag next to the shabby couch, and then collapse without ceremony on top it. He kicked off his shoes and groaned in pleasure, his cramped toes finally freed from their confines. Eight hours was too long a long time to imprison ones feet, especially if the prison in question originally had been sized for his high school feet.

The living room's resident spider dangled peacefully from its web directly above his nose. From the kitchen, he heard the scratch and scribble of Kazuma's pencil on his yellow notepad as he took silent, exhaustive notes on the behavior of the atom. Yukine had ceased complaining, which Yato took to mean that his mouth was full. Outside the dingy window, a solitary bird had already begun its warbling evening song.

All was normal, and Yato shut his eyes in contentment.

Yukine wandered into the room, half a piece of pizza hanging from his mouth and another couple slices balanced in his hand.

"Want one?" he mumbled around the mouthful. Yato shook his head.

"Believe it or not, delivering those all day has conditioned me to associate pizza with work. So, no thanks."

Yukine echoed Yato's earlier snort. "Like that'll stop you from eating a whole pie by yourself. At three in the morning."

"I get hungry!" Yato said plaintively, stung by this unfair and accurate remark.

"Yeah." Yukine grimaced. "I know."

Yato sat up, the springs of the couch creaking under his inconsequential weight. Frowning, he shoved his feet into the small shoes again. His toes screamed their offense.

"I just came by to drop those off," he said, stretching his long arms. "And to say hi to Eloise." He waved at the spider. "Hi, Eloise!"

Yukine rolled his eyes. Kazuma strolled into the living room, having made the fastidious decision to eat his pizza off a paper plate.

"And, you are going…?" Kazuma allowed the question to hang in the air, unfinished.

"For your information, I am on my way to help a very nice older lady clean out her spice cabinet."

Yukine squinted. "Does she… _know_ you are?"

Yato shrugged. "She most likely saw my picture on one of the flyers, and merely let her heart decide."

Kazuma shook his head, and Yukine snorted a laugh, this time in the middle of a bite. Yato got up and plucked his messenger bag from beside the couch. He whacked the wheezing Yukine soundly on the back, and he coughed up an olive.

"Enjoy the fruits of my hard labor," he called back, heading for the front door. "I expect a tip!"

The door fell shut behind Yato, cutting short Yukine's prolific and creative cursing. He hitched his messenger bag higher up on his shoulder and began walking toward the bus stop. The bag hit his leg with every step, a muted jangle coming from it with every thunk. The bottle of coins Yato constantly carried with him was less an indication of economic security than it was a symbol: a small reminder that all these tiny steps—from mowing lawns to organizing old ladies' spice cabinets—would hopefully lead him somewhere else. Somewhere bright, and secure, and maybe even wonderful.

It was a reminder that he was, just maybe, destined for something greater than pizza.

The door to the next house opened and shut, and Yato's feet froze mid-step.

This street was lined with modest buildings, most of them badly in need of paint. The house Yato stopped in front of, however, was the fresh white of a new eggshell, impeccably landscaped, and at least twice as large as any in the neighborhood. It was neighbor to the lodging he shared with Yukine and Kazuma, which in comparison looked, quite frankly, impoverished.

Yato had not shared many conversations with his next-door neighbors, but he knew more about them than he was comfortable admitting.

He knew there were three of them: all girls. He knew that the one with glasses played the piano. Badly. He knew that the light-haired one went twice a week to her club at the community theater. Once, he had overheard the piano-playing one arguing loudly with the theater one about the unsanitary effects of leaving her breakfast dishes lying around in the bathtub. He had felt guilty about hearing this, but not enough to shut his window.

The third girl—the one who had just walked out of the house, and was now heading straight toward him—was the only one whose name Yato remembered.

Her name was Hiyori Iki, and he was in love with her.

: : :

The first time Yato spoke to Hiyori Iki had been six months ago. He had finished his shift at the same time her bus dropped her off at the end of the street. It would seem that unadulterated chance had dictated their meeting. But Yato did not believe in chance. They had walked back to their respective houses together, and he had made an odd joke that she found far funnier than most people would have. She mentioned she was in school to become a doctor, and Yato had made all the properly impressed noises. He left her at the walk up to her door with a polite "Have a nice evening," and she smiled at him in a way that made his ears tingle.

The second time he spoke to Hiyori Iki was a week after their first conversation, and again at the end of his shift. The bus had just dropped her off at the end of the street. She waved at him and said: "It's Yato, isn't it?"

That was when he had fallen in love with her.

Yato didn't question the way he seemed to slip out of people's memory, like a tadpole through a fishing net. It had simply been built into the architecture of his life. His was not a memorable existence. There were a very small number of exceptions, such as Yukine and Kazuma. There was also his old friend Kofuku who—along with a terrifying grizzly bear of a man who called himself her boyfriend—ran a very modest, very pink convenience store a few blocks over.

And that was it.

Until suddenly, there was Hiyori. A full week had passed, and she had remembered his name. From that moment, Yato was finished. He was in love with her, miserably, hopelessly so, and there was no point trying to pretend otherwise.

And then the next week, his shift ended right on schedule. He arrived at that corner to meet the bus. But this time, there was no Hiyori. After a few agonized hours of making the worst kinds of assumptions, Yato realized that her semester schedule must have shifted. Her classes would be at different times. She would forget him.

After this, he made every attempt, short of actually stalking her, to memorize her schedule. He craved contact with her, and when none came, he frequently subjected his roommates to dramatic performances of his unrequited passion, most of which involved quarts of ice cream and a sickening amount of daytime television.

Yukine, in between elaborate eye rolls and snarky comments, was persuaded to help keep an eye on Hiyori's comings and goings. Despite their best efforts, her everyday whereabouts remained shrouded in mystery.

"Maybe you should move on?" Kazuma had once suggested, earning him a severe glare from Yukine and a look of deep betrayal from Yato.

"That's rich, coming from you," Yukine immediately pointed out, and Kazuma flinched.

"That's…different," he had said lamely. Yato was not paying attention, because Hiyori had, by some miracle, just left the house to collect the mail and he needed to focus all his attention on plastering his face to the windowpane.

: : :

Now Hiyori was here, walking toward Yato with blatant recognition. The smile that blossomed on her lips did awful things to his blood pressure.

"Hello!" she exclaimed. It was a genuine, delighted greeting. Yato conducted a frantic search for his tongue, only to find it lying limp and heavy at the bottom of his mouth, dry as the moon.

He swallowed viciously, but it was still a longer-than-polite pause before he managed to croak: "Hi."

"It's been a while, hasn't it?" Hiyori asked. She walked right up to him, smiling relentlessly. If she knew the exact effects of that smile on his nervous system, she just might take pity.

"Yeah," Yato replied. He was hitting it out of the park.

Hiyori's eyebrows contracted in what could have been concern. Yato swallowed again, and bravely attempted a smile of his own.

"How are you?" he asked. Then, in a burst of inspiration: "Are—are your classes going well?"

Hiyori's smile sank into a rueful grimace. "They're going well enough, I suppose. Everything seems to speed up this time of year."

Yato nodded wisely, and Hiyori cast a glance toward his messenger bag.

"Off to work?" she asked.

"Sort of," he said, managing a shrug. "Not pizza, this time."

Hiyori cocked her head inquisitively, and Yato struggled to make himself think of anything except how cute it was, and how hot his neck was.

"Oh, really?" she asked curiously.

He nodded again. "I'm off to see a lady about some spices."

Hiyori laughed, easing the knot of nerves in his chest. Yato allowed himself a chuckle.

"Really, though," he said. "I am going to clean out a stranger's spice cabinet."

"A stranger who saw your flyer?" Hiyori asked, lowering her voice to a knowing, almost conspiratorial tone.

Yato's eyes widened, and he blushed up to the roots of his hair.

"Oh. You…saw those?"

"'No price too low, no task too steep'." She quoted his own catchphrase back at him. Her lip twitched. "You may want to rethink your slogan."

Yato lifted one eyebrow. "You have a better suggestion?"

Hiyori tapped her chin. "How about calling yourself something impressive? Like a…like a 'god of deliveries'." She made an abstract gesture with one hand, encompassing the fame and wealth this title would undoubtedly bring him.

"But I don't just do deliveries!" Yato said defensively.

She shrugged, then once again graced him with that heart-seizing grin. "I just think it's catchy."

Yato was helpless against her. "I'll consider it."

Hiyori didn't respond, but her eyes fell once again to his threadbare messenger bag.

"You must be very busy with all those clients," she said. Although she phrased it as a statement, the lift in her voice turned the final word into a question. Yato made a noncommittal noise at the back of his throat.

"Shockingly, people tend to be wary of calling a stranger who posts flyers of his face all over the street to come do their chores for them."

"No way!" Hiyori shook her head pityingly, but the corners of her lips quivered with laughter. "That's so sad for them."

Yato was opening his mouth to say something—he didn't know what—but suddenly, the door to the house flew open, and another girl poked her head out. It was one of Hiyori's roommates: the one with the glasses.

"Jeez, Hiyori, did you get eaten by the mailbox or some…thing…" She trailed off to stare at Yato. He waved.

Hiyori had jumped at the interruption, then looked at the white mailbox as though she only just remembered it existed. She pulled the front open and reached inside, fumbling for the cluster of mail that was crammed all the way in the back.

Her roommate did not return inside the house, nor did she stop staring at Yato. He began to wonder if he should leave.

"Be back in a moment, Ami," Hiyori called, the front half of her body nearly inside the mailbox.

Yato took one step backward. He wanted to say "goodbye," or "good night," or maybe "here's my phone number," or possibly, "how do you feel about raising a family in the countryside, because I think we'd have beautiful children."

Instead he said this:

"Well—I have to go spice things up."

Hiyori didn't seem to hear him. She rummaged in the mailbox some more, which gave Yato a good ten seconds to ruthlessly browbeat himself for that comment.

When at last she withdrew herself from the mailbox, along with an armful of envelopes, she had a worried, distant look on her face. She turned one of them over to look at the back, and her shoulders drooped. She looked back up at him, and her eyes appeared to be focused on a point several feet behind his head. Yato found himself disoriented by her sudden detachment, and took another step backward.

"So." He swallowed. "I'll, um. I'll see you?"

Hiyori looked from him, back to the cream-colored envelope in her hand.

"Yes," she said absently. Her eyes never left the spider-script looping across the ivory paper.

Yato's stomach sank. He turned away and began walking. When he was ten steps away—

"Yato!"

Electricity bolted up his spine. He turned back.

Hiyori was waving at him from the porch, one hand tucked to her chest and clutching the mysterious envelope.

"Good luck!" she cried.

Yato grinned and saluted, then turned away. He heard the door of the house close behind her, but the warmth in his stomach wasn't leaving. His step had found its spring. Against his thigh, the bottle of coins sang with each stride. He moved with purpose. His destiny was not pizza.

And best of all, Hiyori Iki remembered his name.


	2. The Language of the Elite

Hiyori's shoulders slumped as soon as she walked in. Ami, after shutting the door behind her, raced to the window to follow Yato's retreating figure down the street with her eyes.

"Okay," she said after a brief pause. "You did not tell us about _that._ "

Hiyori didn't answer. Her blood coagulated with dread as she continued staring at the elegant script that curled its way across the back of the envelope in her hand.

"No," she murmured. "Please, no."

Ami tore herself away from the window. "What happened? Did you get served?"

Hiyori looked up, her expression desolate. "Worse. It's from my mom."

: : :

"Personally," said Yama, "I do not see what is so awful about having a fancy dinner with your family. Especially when they're taking you out to _Moon God_ of all places."

Yama breathed the name of the restaurant like it was a prayer. "That's like…sushi heaven," she said reverently.

Hiyori was holding her head in both hands, her elbows on the dining room table.

"Why couldn't she just _email_ or _text_ me like a regular person," she moaned.

The invitation to dinner had arrived on stiff, expensive stationary where the inevitable curly words had instructed Hiyori to attend. Not requested: _instructed._

"Because your mother speaks the language of the elite," Ami said comfortingly. "It can only be communicated underneath a wax seal with the appropriate coat of arms."

Hiyori lowered her head all the way down to the table, swinging her arms down on both sides of the chair.

"It's worse than that, even," she mumbled into the table. Her friends leaned in to hear better, as Hiyori, still plastered forehead-first to the table, informed them of what the conversation had been the last time she was among her extended family.

: : :

It had been several months ago, when her maternal grandparents came to stay at her parents' house over Christmas. Once her older brother, Masaomi, had showed up with his very nice, be-cardiganed boyfriend in tow, the conversation had taken an uncomfortable turn.

"So, Hiyori," her grandmother said. "It looks like you're the last!"

The older woman's tone was jovial, but Hiyori felt the skin on her arms start crawling up toward her neck like she was covered in centipedes.

"I suppose medical school _does_ get in the way of dating," she said.

"You haven't met any…nice young doctors-to-be?" her grandmother asked, exchanging a meaningful look with Hiyori's mother.

Hiyori fought the urge to sink under her chair, hoping that if she tried hard enough she could simply pop out of existence. Instead, she sipped her champagne delicately and pondered just exactly how disowned she would be if the rest of it just _happened_ to be splashed on her grandmother's expensive lace collar.

"You remember the Fujisaki family, don't you?" Hiyori's mother asked innocently.

Hiyori gritted her teeth until they creaked. "Yes," she said, through tight lips. "I remember them."

This champagne would definitely end up all over someone else before the night was over.

"Their son is just a few years older than you," Mrs. Iki cooed, playing a paragon of innocence. "And he's doing quite well in his profession, from what I hear. He's a doctor."

"How nice," Hiyori ground out. Her lips were stretched across her face in a taut line, but neither her grandmother nor her mother seemed to notice. She cast Masaomi a pleading glance where he sat next to his boyfriend across the room, but he just gave her a helpless shrug. She glared at him until he turned pale and looked away. _Bastard._ This was all his fault.

"We should invite them over sometime," Mrs. Iki continued. "I think you would get along wonderfully with—"

Hiyori set her champagne flute on the coffee table with a brittle clink. Mrs. Iki fell suddenly silent.

"Mom," she said, striving for a gentle tone. "I do not want to see Kouto Fujisaki again."

The stem of the glass complained under her grip. "I do not want to see him, _ever_."

Her mother and grandmother blinked at her in infuriating confusion.

"Whatever has he done, dear?" her grandmother asked.

This was the worst question of all, because Hiyori did not have a good response to it.

Kouto Fujisaki was charming, witty, and handsome. He was beloved of every mother, respected by every father. He saved kittens from trees for fun. And being around him gave Hiyori the distinct feeling that someone had just poured a bucket of eels down the back of her shirt.

She herself understood what discomforted her so much about him, but it wasn't exactly a defensible argument in this setting. For a particularly morbid school project, she had had to look up the mugshots of famous serial killers. When the look in several of their flat, dead-fish eyes had struck her as familiar, she realized she had seen that look peering out at her from Kouto Fujisaki's face. It was a stark, loathsome emptiness that made her sick to look at.

But now, she heard herself say, in defeat:

"Nothing."

Her mother and grandmother exchanged a look of triumph, and abruptly, Hiyori couldn't stand it for another second. It was no one's right to force her on Fujisaki, and she'd hate herself if she lost this most pitiful of contests.

So she sucked in a huge breath and proclaimed, in a voice ringing with victory:

"Actually, I don't want to see him, because I happen to have a boyfriend."

: : :

Ami and Yama stared blankly at Hiyori after she recounted the dismal tale.

"You _don't_ have a boyfriend…right?" Yama asked incredulously, while Ami raised her eyebrows so sharply they could have sliced bread.

"No!" Hiyori ripped her face off the table and stared at them with a forsaken expression. "I don't! But now my entire family wants to meet the one I already _told_ them I have!"

"Well, why don't you just tell them you broke up with him?" Ami asked, always pragmatic.

"Because they'll foist Fujisaki on me again," Hiyori said miserably.

"You could tell them you don't want to date," Yama said, drumming her fingers thoughtfully on the edge of the table.

Hiyori bestowed a bitter glare upon her. "Have you _met_ my mother? That's tantamount to saying I don't want to eat. It's the sort of thing that in her world leads to therapy."

Yama threw her hands up in defeat. "Okay, okay."

After a few more seconds of silent deliberation, Ami pushed her chair back from the table.

"Or you could just…get a boyfriend," she said offhandedly, and disappeared into her own room. Yama followed suit, giving Hiyori a couple pats on the shoulder.

"You'll figure something out, Hiyo," she said comfortingly. Then she shrugged. "Hey, maybe Fujisaki has improved since you last saw him!"

After they had both left her alone, Hiyori sat motionless at the table for a long while, eyes frozen on her interlocked thumbs. Ami's words reverberated in her mind.

And there was a flyer on the telephone pole across the road from the kitchen window, fluttering just within her range of vision. A bold declaration was emblazoned on it, along with a phone number.

 _"NO PRICE TOO LOW! NO TASK TOO STEEP!"_

: : :

Hiyori didn't give herself time to second-guess her decision, or reconsider the impropriety of asking a boy she barely knew to take money in exchange for pretending to date her. All she knew was that she had tipped the scale into decidedly desperate territory.

But they could help each other. She repeated this to herself, a mantra every few seconds, to keep her nerve up as she walked over to the neighboring house.

"I have a proposal," she practiced saying out loud, "that I believe can benefit both of us."

She cringed. Too formal, and a bit of a Godfather vibe. She would just have to wing it. Raising her hand, she approached the door and gave three brisk raps against it before she chickened out. A few moments later, it swung open.

Hiyori expected Yato, but the boy on the other side of the door was a head shorter, blonde, and had such an obviously impeccable sense of fashion that Hiyori instantly doubted he, Yato, and that bewildering tracksuit could share a living space.

"Hi," she said hesitantly. "I-I think I have the wrong house."

The boy's mouth fell open, and his eyes widened dramatically. They were a striking color: a luminous, golden-green that, apropos of nothing, reminded Hiyori of sweet, summer-baked gardens.

As soon as the boy realized he was staring, he shut his mouth with a snap and looked at the ground. "Hi," he said, anticlimactically. Then he extended a small hand toward her. "I'm Yukine. You're at the right house."

"Oh," Hiyori said. "Good." She shook his hand, then let go and cleared her throat.

"Um. Is Yato here?"

Yukine glanced up at her, and a mysterious expression flashed over his face before he resumed a normal smile. "Yes, he just got back from work."

He waved her inside, and Hiyori used every ounce of resolve to avoid gawking openly at the interior of the house. She peered to her right into the small kitchen, where chip bags and an alarming number of pizza boxes littered every flat service. Yukine tapped her elbow lightly, and she jumped.

"You can come in here," he said, jerking a thumb across the hallway to the small, shabby living room. Hiyori followed him in, then, at his silent invitation, seated herself on the very farthest corner of the narrow couch.

Yukine did not sit down. Instead he turned around, cupped his hands over his mouth, and hollered into the recesses of the house: _"YATO, IT'S FOR YOU."_ Then he turned back to give her an angelic smile. She returned it, trying not to look terrified.

There was the sound of a door slamming open, of footsteps in the hallway. Hiyori clenched her fingers together. Her knuckles went white as paper, bones pressing sharply against the flesh. Now that she was inside Yato's house, sitting on his couch, her little scheme suddenly seemed childish, ludicrous, and offensive. This was rude and presumptuous. This was a mistake.

But before she could flee, Yato burst into the living room with his tracksuit half-unzipped. He tipped his head back, shoved a handful of pretzels into his mouth, and said around them:

"Whatiffit, Yukine?!"

Yukine jerked his head toward where Hiyori was self-consciously trying to sit a bit straighter on the couch. Yato's eyes fell on her, and they widened.

Hiyori would forever have a difficult time explaining why meeting Yato's gaze made her ribs feel suddenly tight—like her lungs had, for whatever reason, decided they were too big for the rest of her body. They were eyes that didn't make sense in the rest of his face, the features of which didn't necessarily abide by the rules of classic handsomeness. Even in his curiosity and confusion, Yato's eyes burned through the defensive mechanisms she had constructed around this ridiculous request. So she decided she would simply be honest.

It was a relief, Hiyori thought, to feel that she could at least do that around _one_ person.

As she wrestled internally with this, Yato allowed half the pretzels to fall out of his mouth and onto the thinly carpeted floor.

"Hiyori?" he said incredulously. He stared at her, unaware that his shirt was covered in salty crumbs.

She stood up at once, brushing her skirt off, and squared her shoulders. She summoned every ounce of professionalism in her soul as she declared:

"Hello, Yato. I would like to hire you."

Yato held her gaze for a moment, and then a lopsided grin crept across his mouth. "So," he said. "You've come to the delivery god."

She nodded stiffly, unable to smile back as her gut gave a sudden, wrenching twist. "It's…"

She swallowed, loudly.

"It's kind of a weird job."

Yato and Yukine exchanged a quick look of apprehension. Hiyori gasped.

"I don't—I don't mean anything _illegal!_ —it's not a hit, or anything—"

Yukine snickered loudly, and Yato scowled at him.

"Out," he ordered.

"Aww," Yukine groaned. "The first job you get that's actually interesting and I can't even listen?"

" _Out."_ Yato turned Yukine by his shoulders and marched him into the back. Hiyori heard a door slam, and Yato returned a moment later, brushing his hands off.

"I'm not sure where that kid came from," he said, shaking his head. "Now all he does is eat pizza and give me sass."

Hiyori laughed tightly. Her hands gripped each other until her blood-starved fingertips tingled. Yato's gaze dropped to her shaking hands, then returned to her eyes.

"Is everything okay, Hiyori?" he asked. The concern in his voice was what did it.

"I need you to be my boyfriend," she burst out.

The words dropped, flat and heavy, in the immediate silence. And then Yato choked on a pretzel.

"You _what?"_ he wheezed. He thumped a fist repeatedly to his chest, his face quickly darkening to a rich, turnip purple that Hiyori chose to assign to asphyxiation, rather than embarrassment.

"I'd like to hire you," she clarified. "To…to do that. To be my boyfriend. Temporarily." She drew a deep, shaky breath. "I may have…told my family a few things about my personal life that are not entirely accurate. It's—um."

How much, exactly, was she obligated to confide in him about her family issues? Hiyori licked her lips, miserably aware of the silence.

"That point is—I need help," she said. "And I need it soon. I understand if this is uncomfortable for you, and if you have to say no, that's fine."

The acute, awful silence dragged on for nearly a minute. Suddenly, Hiyori's stomach folded over on itself and she lurched to her feet, sick with humiliation.

"Actually, you know what?" she said. "Never mind!" She laughed crazily, wobbling on weak knees. "It's fine. I'm—I'm _so_ sorry, this was a mistake—"

Wringing her hands, Hiyori pushed past Yato and into the narrow hallway. She was hurrying out the door when he called after her:

"I'll do it."

She stopped, one foot already on the welcome mat. Then, slowly, she turned back. Yato stood still at the entrance to the living room. There were two spots of pink high on his cheekbones, but other than that, his expression betrayed nothing.

"Sure, I'll pretend to be your boyfriend," he said. "If you need help with this, then I'm definitely not gonna leave you in the lurch. Besides,"—he flashed her a quick, subtle smile—"I'm pretty good at acting."

The confidence in his voice helped to untwist Hiyori's stomach from the writhing mess of knots it had morphed into. She stood on the welcome mat, staring speechlessly at him for several seconds.

"O-of course," she finally said. "And—I mean—I'd pay you, obviously. Um. Whatever you…you think is…"

Yato waved both his hands frantically, and she trailed off.

"We can cover that later!" he assured her. "Uh…did you want to, maybe, talk more about it, sometime? If I'm going to be your"—he coughed loudly into his fist—"your, uh, _paramour,_ we should come up with some…some facts, right? Backstory?"

"Oh. Yes." Hiyori stepped back into the house, letting the door fall shut behind her. "We should. And…we should probably do it soon."


	3. The Dinner

"This is happening _tomorrow_?!"

Yukine sat at the end of his small bed, his elbows resting on his knees. He leaned his forehead against his fists, and his hair flopped down over his eyes.

"You have to have all this ready by…tomorrow," he repeated, trying to convince himself this was really happening.

Yato wasn't listening. "We're going to spend a lot of time together," he said quietly. "We're going to really need to _sell_ it, Yukine. Don't you see?"

Yukine lifted his face from his knuckles. Yato sat cross-legged on top of Yukine's desk, gazing dreamily off into a vista only he could see, and smiling like a drunk. Yukine certainly saw _something_ , though he wasn't sure he and Yato were looking at the same thing. The latter's behavior for the last hour had been more suggestive of a man who had harnessed a shooting star, rather than one who was quickly running out of time to figure out how to fool his fake-girlfriend's family into thinking their relationship was real.

"How much is she paying?" he asked, successfully diverting Yato's train of thought.

"Oh." Yato scratched his knuckles. "We didn't really get around to that."

Yukine groaned. He let his face fall against his fists again. "Of course you didn't."

"Get around to what?" asked Kazuma, who popped his head into the room at the sound of urgent voices. His glasses hung crookedly off the end of his nose and a questionable amount of ink was smeared over his chin and left cheek. It looked to Yukine as though he had dozed off while studying. Again.

"Nothing!" Yato shouted. The sudden yell startled Yukine, who nearly fell off the end of his bed. Kazuma also jumped, and his glasses toppled off his face.

"We're not up to anything!" Yato continued, drawing frantic cutthroats across his own neck to indicate to Yukine he shouldn't say anything. Yukine rolled his eyes.

Kazuma retrieved his glasses from the floor, then gave Yato a look of supreme doubt before retreating back into the hallway. "All right then," he said, walking away. "Keep it down though. I've got work tonight."

Their third roommate spent most of his evenings as a physics tutor at the university's campus center. Recently, he had been spending a lot less time playing video games with Yato, and a lot more time preparing for his increasingly lengthy shifts providing academic guidance to wealthy undergraduates. That had been several months ago, and as far as Yukine could discern, Kazuma's "purely scholastic reason" for his longer hours was named Viina: a tall, silver-haired, kickboxing goddess who was about as far out of Kazuma's league as Uzbekistan. Yato's habit of relentlessly teasing Kazuma about his crush was nipped quite thoroughly when Yukine reminded him that he'd spent half a year pining over a girl who'd exchanged words with him four times.

Yukine waited for Kazuma to disappear down the hallway before turning back to Yato.

"So," he said. "Where are you meeting her?"

"Outside her house tomorrow," Yato said. "Her parents are sending a car to come get her."

Yukine's eyes grew large. "Wow."

"Yeah," Yato replied reverently. His eyes wandered off, fixing on a dreamy middle distance in which he and Hiyori lived happily together in a stretch limousine, unhaunted by pizza deliveries and tone-deaf roommates, where they ate caviar languorously off each other's fingers (that's how people eat caviar, isn't it?), and fell asleep lost in each other's eyes—

Yukine clicked his tongue and Yato tumbled out of his paradise.

"What are you going to wear?" Yukine demanded.

Yato looked down at his ratty tracksuit. Countless white threads sprang free of its seams, and the jersey's front zipper track had started to detach from the fabric.

"Isn't this okay?" he asked.

Yukine settled his forehead on one clenched fist.

"No, it is not."

"Then lend me something."

"I will not."

"Then buy me something."

"I will _not_."

Yato flung his hands in the air.

"This is the best thing I own, Yukine! Are you saying I should just go naked?"

: : :

"I wish I could just go naked."

Yato yanked at his collar, straining the buttons on the front of the dress shirt. Yukine was still fussing with the knot on his tie, and Yato batted him away.

"Leave it," he groaned. "I'll be miserable no matter what you do to me."

"Aren't the flowers too much?" Kazuma asked from the hallway, where the modest bouquet Yato had picked up that afternoon sat on top of a towering stack of empty pizza boxes waiting for the recycling. Yato finally detached Yukine from his efforts with the bow tie, and held his hand out for the bouquet.

"Flowers are _never_ too much," he corrected, adjusting a daisy. "And thanks for the clothes, Kazuma."

"Please don't ruin them," Kazuma pleaded. Yato gave them a quick salute, then dashed off the front porch toward the neighboring house.

: : :

Hiyori tugged at a loose strand of hair as she waited for Yato and the rental car. She didn't notice how much she had pulled loose until Ami caught her hand, tugged the curl away, and twisted it neatly back into place.

"You're going to crash and burn if you don't start looking less guilty," she said. Yama nodded from the kitchen table, where she was enthusiastically crunching on raw almonds with garlic. The smell made Hiyori's stomach roll.

"I appreciate the encouragement," she said acidly. "But I think I'm perfectly capable of acting smitten, under the proper circumstances."

"I don't think it's your ' _acting'_ that will be a problem," Yama muttered. Hiyori only half-heard her as a loud knock echoed from the front door. She leaped to her feet, snatched her purse from the floor, and hurried to the entry hall.

She opened the door a bit too quickly. Yato stood on the other side, his hand still raised. He had on nicer clothes than she had ever seen him wear: a plain, light blue dress shirt, tan pants that were just the slightest bit too short for him, and a navy tie that looked like it had seen the ungentle touch of a laundromat one too many times. In his other hand he held a small bouquet of white daises and sunflowers.

"Hi! Hello!" she said loudly. "Um, come in!"

Yato didn't move. He just looked at her, hand frozen in midair. Her heart kicked into high gear when she met his eyes. Behind her, in the kitchen, Ami and Yama were stuffing their fists into their mouths, their shoulders shaking.

"Or—you know what, I'll come out here," Hiyori said, shame washing over her. She nudged between Yato and the door, shutting it firmly behind her.

After the door snapped shut, the only sound was the crickets humming around the house. A breeze caught at the rebellious strand of hair, tugging it across Hiyori's face and tangling in her eyelashes.

"So," she began. Her voice came out in a harsh rasp, and she cleared her throat. "Are you, uh, ready?"

Once again, she felt the weight of foolishness at asking something like this of him. She began tallying appropriate bonuses that might stack up against this evening's embarrassment: an extra twenty-five if her mother brought up "dear Hiyori's" unorthodox taste in men, fifty if her grandfather said something racist.

"Of course I'm ready," Yato announced.

Hiyori, woken from her fever dream of simple mathematics, looked back at him. He was grinning at her, which gave his entire face a crooked, energetic, Cheshire-esque quality that suited a bank heist rather better than it did a mundane family dinner.

"You look…nice," Hiyori said, sounding rather impolitely surprised about it. Yato didn't seem to notice.

"So do you," he said. Then he looked down at the bouquet, as though just remembering he was holding it.

"Oh. These are yours."

He offered the flowers to her, and, after hesitating briefly, Hiyori took them.

"Too much?" he asked.

She looked down at them. Her thumb brushed the soft underside of a daisy petal.

"I don't think flowers are ever too much."

The hired car pulled up in front of the house, and gave two genteel honks. Hiyori tore her gaze away from the flowers, and smiled at Yato uncomfortably.

"So. Ready to go lie to all my relatives?"

: : :

They went over the backstory again in the car. Yato would rather have his toenails pried off than admit how much he already knew about Hiyori, how little he would have to pretend to be the dopey, lovestruck boyfriend she was paying him so generously to imitate.

"And you remember how we met?" she reminded him, as the car pulled up in front of _Moon God_. Yato caught a glimpse of some of the restaurant's patrons as they drew up to the curb, and suddenly realized Kazuma's clothing was about as trendy as a pair of his grandmother's drapes.

"Yes," he mumbled.

"And how long we've been together?"

"Uh huh…"

"And, if my grandmother starts asking you about your job, you tell her you're…?"

"Sure, of course."

"Yato?"

His eyes snapped to Hiyori's. Her mouth was crooked with worry. He felt his gut contract with guilt.

"Sorry. That I'm, uh, upwardly mobile in the…food service industry?" he tried.

She smiled. "Nice."

The car stopped, and Yato leaped out to open the door for her. He considered offering her his hand, but Hiyori was out of the vehicle before his courage made an appearance. She slammed the door, brushed her skirt off, and adjusted her blouse. Yato looked away, then realized that, as her "boyfriend," he shouldn't feel self-conscious watching her preen, so he looked back. She watched him quizzically.

"You look a bit green," she observed.

"It's the lighting." He pointed to the vomit-green _Moon God_ sign above their heads. "Ghastly, isn't it?"

Then he offered her his arm, and they walked into the restaurant together.

The Ikis and extended family were already seated in a private chamber toward the back of the dimly lit restaurant. The hostess escorted Yato and Hiyori to the door, and primly bowed them in.

"Sweetheart!" cried a woman sitting near the end of the table, obviously Hiyori's mother. She rose from her seat, glided over to them, and pressed a kiss to both her daughter's cheeks.

"How late you are! We were starting to worry."

"Must have been the chauffeur," said the man sitting next to Mrs. Iki's empty chair—Hiyori's father.

Mrs. Iki turned her attention to Yato, her eyebrows already beginning to travel toward her hairline. "And this is…?"

He didn't miss her raking gaze, which traveled from the tips of Kazuma's freshly polished dress shoes to the crown of Yato's head, where one solitary black hair refused to cooperate.

"This is Yato," Hiyori said loudly. She gripped his arm, pressing herself closer to his side. Yato caught a whiff of her raspberry shampoo and broke into a fierce sweat.

"Very pleased to meet you," he said, smiling. Then, because Mrs. Iki didn't smile back, he unleashed the only weapon in his arsenal: the Wink.

It was a Wink that could charm the pennies from lonely widows, could make coeds on the street pause and blush—it even had allowed him to evade the errant parking ticket. It was a highly specialized weapon, that Wink. Not even Mrs. Iki was immune.

"Likewise," she tittered, holding out her hand to him. Yato took it, bowing slightly from the waist.

"Sit down, Hiyori," said her father, gesturing to two empty chairs near the middle of the table. "So we can eat. Finally."

Hiyori tugged Yato along, and squeezed into her spot before he could pull the chair out for her. He slunk into his own seat, profoundly conscious of all the eyes drilling into him. How many judgmental Ikis were there in this small room? At least seventy, surely.

The waitress popped her head into the room. "Are we all ready to order?" she piped.

After all the sushi was ordered, and Yato had carefully selected the cheapest thing on the menu, the awful, observant silence once again descended. He didn't dare look around the table to see how many people were there, or how many of their clothes were better than his.

"So," someone finally said, breaking the pall that hung over their table. "How's school going, sis?"

Yato reluctantly raised his eyes to the speaker. It was a bespectacled young man, wearing what could only be described as a cardigan ensemble, sitting opposite him and stirring a Pepto-Bismol-pink cocktail. Around them, other smaller conversations at the table began to break out, and Yato's stomach began to unwind from its elaborate sailor's knot.

The question was aimed at Hiyori, but the man was looking at Yato.

"It's going well," Hiyori mumbled into her water glass.

"I'm Masaomi," said the man. He reached across the table to shake Yato's hand. "Hiyori's big brother."

"Nice to meet you," Yato said. He took Masaomi's frail, cool hand and shook it delicately, as though handling an eggshell.

"I'm the family disgrace," Masaomi said cheerfully. Yato decided he liked him just fine.

"Nonsense," said the woman to Masaomi's right, who seemed to be made entirely of feathers. Upon further scrutiny, Yato discovered that this impression was given by her gown still being as close to several live peacocks as the lack of avian internal organs would allow.

"I didn't become a physician, or a lawyer, or a CEO, or even a reasonably well-compensated accountant," Masaomi continued. He leaned over the table, giving Yato the impression that the two of them were now co-conspirators. "And everyone knows that if you don't make it in corporate, you may as well get ahold of a refrigerator box and hope the street corner you land is warm."

Yato laughed nervously, and glanced sideways at Hiyori, who was dutifully sipping her ice water and being as unhelpful as possible.

"Stop scaring the poor boy," said the peacock lady. She fixed Yato with her sharp gaze. He found himself staring up the beak of her nose, and feeling like he was suddenly about two centimeters tall.

"What is your profession, young man?"

With this woman's beady, bird-black eyes trained on him, Yato found the words "upwardly mobile" impossible to say. He flung caution to the wind.

"I'm a god."

Hiyori swallowed an ice cube and immediately began to choke.

"…Sorry?" asked the peacock lady.

"I mean, that's what they call me. The god of…pasta. I cook pasta."

Peacock Lady blinked. "You are a chef?"

"Yes," Yato lied effortlessly. "I am a chef."

He looked over at Hiyori, worried that she might still be struggling to breathe. He met her eyes and winced. If a look could kill, he would be skewered to the opposite wall with his own chopsticks.

"How fascinating!" said Peacock Lady. "Hiyori darling, wherever did you find him?"

Hiyori didn't break her murderous glare as she answered sweetly: "I sent a dish back to the kitchens. There was a rat in it."

Yato blanched.

"Yes," he gasped. "Must have missed that when I stirred it all up." He cleared his throat. "Usually spot their little tails before they get onto the stove."

Peacock Lady's eyes were wide in horror, and she held one hand trembling over her heart. "Heavens!" she breathed.

"So of course I went out to her and apologized," Yato continued, hoping Masaomi's shaking shoulders were the onset of a seizure, and not the spasms of hilarity. "And…well…"

"Turns out that rat was the best thing to ever happen to our relationship!" Hiyori finished off. She batted her eyelashes theatrically at Yato, causing his blood pressure to skyrocket.

"Well, isn't that just the most darling story?" asked a male voice from near the end of the table. Yato felt the hair on the back of his neck wither under its dripping disdain. He leaned forward, trying to see who the voice belonged to. His eyes met two cold, grinning slits of pure malice, leveled at him over one of the well-loaded tuna rolls that had just arrived.

"Local restaurateur serves vermin, finds true love," the stranger drawled, popping a bite of sushi in his mouth, which Yato thought contained several more teeth than were strictly necessary.

He didn't notice the sudden tightening of every muscle in Hiyori's body, or the way her mouth twisted.

"Mother," Hiyori muttered. "You said this was a _family_ dinner."

Mrs. Iki looked like she wanted to have this conversation outside. "Kouto's stepmother is my third cousin," she said, lamely. "And he is a…a lovely boy."

Hiyori looked like she wanted to put a dinner knife through someone's hand. Yato slid his own away, just in case. Then he caught her eye, and there he saw the spark of something painfully familiar.

Hiyori was afraid.

He cleared his throat loudly, drawing every eye back to him.

"Mrs. Iki," he said. "I've heard so much about your beautiful calligraphy from Hiyori. How did your interest begin?"

Again, Hiyori's mother flushed pink at his charming, interested tone. As she waxed eloquent on the many brands of expensive paper and pen nibs she had invested in, Yato felt something against his fingers. He looked down. Beneath the table, between their seats, Hiyori's hand hung next to his. She hooked two of her fingers around his pinkie, and squeezed. _Thank you._

Mrs. Iki did rather go on about her calligraphy pens, but Yato managed to feign a credible amount of interest. Hiyori had let go of his pinkie, but his whole hand felt warmer than the rest of him. He nodded along at the right moments as Mrs. Iki monologued, everything she said passing smoothly in one ear, and just as smoothly out the other. At last, her attention was broken by a generous lump of wasabi, and her husband patted her serenely on the back as she wheezed between gulps of iced tea.

"Learning a lot about pen nibs?" Hiyori muttered out of the side of her mouth.

"It's a fascinating hobby," Yato answered. "And useful. A lost art, one might argue."

Hiyori snorted. "I don't think I can pretend to date you if you quote my mother at me."

Yato lifted his chin, peering over the top of Hiyori's head to the end of the table. The man with the cold, vicious eyes was talking animatedly to an ancient fellow in a cravat. Yato recognized the older, from Hiyori's helpful quizzing, as her maternal grandfather. ("He's always wearing a cravat," she told him. "And he looks like he could have been alive when they were invented.")

As though he could sense Yato's stare, the younger man turned his chin the slightest amount, and their gazes met. His lips stretched in a sharkish grin, and Yato dropped his eyes back to his food.

"Who _is_ that?" he muttered. His whole chest felt cold, as though he had been plunged headfirst into ice water. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hiyori's hands wringing themselves in her lap.

"Kouto Fujisaki," she said miserably.

"Why does he look like he wants to eat my liver whole?"

"Don't take it personally," she said. "He looks at everyone like that."

"Are you two…related?" Yato asked, though he wasn't sure he really wanted to hear.

Hiyori shrugged. "According to half my family, we ought to be."

He stared at her blankly. Hiyori's mouth flattened into a stoic line.

"Arranging marriages is another one of my mother's 'lost arts,' Yato."

Yato suddenly felt like his stomach had been scooped out. "Oh," he said bleakly.

Mrs. Iki, having recovered from the wasabi episode, turned back to them. "Hiyori, you must come back with us to the house tonight," she said, her voice rasping only slightly.

Hiyori stiffened. "Why?"

"It's the weekend, isn't it? Why go back to that dreary little place when you can sleep in your own comfortable bed?"

Hiyori abruptly stopped wringing her hands, but when he glanced to her lap, Yato saw she was clenching white-knuckled fists instead.

"I don't have any things packed," she said.

"You have clothes at home. There are spare toiletries also." Mrs. Iki waved her chopsticks noncommittally. "You know we're always ready for you to come home, dear."

Yato had the intense feeling he'd been sucked into the middle of a conversation that probably shouldn't be happening in front of him. He opened his mouth, but Hiyori cut him off.

"I have an early exam tomorrow, and I need to study. My books are at my house."

"Please," Masaomi chortled. "Like _you_ would ever leave studying until the night before."

Hiyori shot him a searing look, but he just smiled again and returned to his sushi. Mr. Iki claimed his wife's attention for a moment, and Yato, taking advantage of the brief pause, muttered out of the corner of his mouth:

"Don't you think it'd be easier to just say yes?"

Hiyori stabbed at her plate. Her head was lowered, but the corner of her mouth nearest him was pulled down unhappily.

"That isn't the point," she said. The rice skittered away from her chopsticks, and she chased it. Her downcast eyes were unfocused, like she was looking somewhere far beyond the table. For a moment, Yato thought she looked much younger than usual.

Hiyori sighed. "I'm tired of this conversation, that's all."

It wasn't really what she had been about to say. But Yato looked at her hands, clenched and white, in her lap, and didn't press the issue.

They ate the rest of the sushi, but sake was being passed around the table, and the voices of the men in the group were growing steadily louder. Specifically, the voice of Kouto Fujisaki.

"I'd like to hear more about you two," he said, swirling a half-empty cup in one hand and pointing both his index and middle fingers at Yato and Hiyori. "I've always adored hearing the meet-cute stories. Humor me. How did you fall in love?"

He gave unnecessary emphasis to the last three words, and Yato stiffened. He and Hiyori had established that their relationship was several months old, but they hadn't actually tackled the specifics of how much they had said or done, or when or where they had said and done it. It was also different having to discuss it with Hiyori's potential future husband, rather than a curious aunt.

Fujisaki kept talking. " _So_ …we know you met over a dead rat," he slurred. "But tell us all the details."

Hiyori shot Yato a panicked glance out of the corner of her eye.

"Uh…we…" he said. Had the room always been this hot? In a panic, he stuffed a piece of sushi into his mouth, pointing to his lips to indicate he couldn't speak. Hiyori gave him a betrayed look, then turned back to Fujisaki.

"More about what?" she asked meekly.

He waggled his sake at her, lifting one eyebrow.

"When did you fall for him, Hiyori? At what moment did you realize it was _him_ you wanted?"

His voice was quieter now, like it was just the three of them at the table. Yato had a suspicion he was not as inebriated as he was putting on.

Hiyori stared at Fujisaki. At first, her eyes were wide and flat with fear, but as she turned and met Yato's gaze, they narrowed thoughtfully. A twitch found the corner of her mouth as she turned to Fujisaki again.

"He helped an elderly neighbor of ours clean out her spice cabinet," she said. "And at that moment I realized I didn't know which was spicier: him, or the cabinet."

Yato, still chewing on his enormous bite, inhaled the rest and turned blue. Fujisaki remained impassive.

"Romantic," he said in a dead voice over Yato's loud, hacking coughs. The conversation steered away from them.

Hiyori thumped Yato gently on the back a few times. As soon as his airway cleared, he turned a horrified glance on her and wheezed: " _Spicy?!"_

She thumped him one last time, rather harder than necessary. "You threw me under the bus," she said sternly. She was smiling.

That was the end of Fujisaki's interference. Disarmed by the spice cabinet saga, he sulked over his sake for the rest of the dinner, and as the rest of the party began to wind down, Yato began to allow himself to think he and Hiyori could get through this without further hiccups.

He looked at her again from the corner of his eye, and saw her hands twisting in the napkin on her lap.

"Are you going back with your parents?" he murmured, under the boisterous, sake-laden voices of two of her uncles who were stormily debating tax reform on the other side of the table. Hiyori swallowed.

"It'll be less of a scene if I just…" She trailed off. The napkin was wound so tightly around her index finger that the tip had turned bluish-white from blood loss. Yato's hand twitched. He didn't reach out.

"You don't _have_ to go with them," he said. Then he grinned. "I could suddenly become very possessive."

Hiyori gave him a shocked glance, but quickly saw the humor in his expression. Her fingers relaxed, her anxious mouth softening.

"I appreciate the sentiment, but I think that might raise more questions than we're prepared for," she rejoined.

Yato's shoulders sagged in mocking exaggeration of his genuine disappointment. "You're right, as usual."

"I'll go with them," Hiyori said. Her fingers smoothed over the napkin on her lap, and she set her jaw.

"You sure?"

"Yes."

She pushed her chair out from the table, signaling to the rest of the party that it was time to leave. Yato saw Mrs. Iki give Hiyori a glance, which was answered with a faint smile and the hint of a nod. He pushed his own chair back, ignoring the unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach.

The group broke up with the exchange of polite pleasantries. Yato and Hiyori left the private dining room, followed by Masaomi, Fujisaki, Hiyori's parents, and one set of her grandparents (maternal? Yato juggled the family tree in his head, but came up dry).

Mr. Iki talked to the valet, while Mrs. Iki turned to her daughter.

"I'm so glad you're coming back with us," she said quietly, squeezing Hiyori's wrist.

"Just for one night," Hiyori muttered. "I have studying to get back to."

Mrs. Iki responded with something, but Yato tried not to hear their conversation. He was mostly successful, since Masaomi and Fujisaki were unnerving the hell out of him with their extreme, unswerving attention. He felt like a small fish being eyed by two enormous, better-dressed sharks.

Masaomi stuck his hand out first. "It was joyous to meet you, Yato," he said, sounding either amused or facetious. Yato surreptitiously wiped his hand on the inside of his coat pocket and then shook Masaomi's with what he hoped was a firm grip.

"It was…ah, joyous, to meet you as well?" The question mark crept into his voice before he could stop it.

Masaomi's mouth twitched, and he released Yato's hand. He nodded to Fujisaki, who had slunk closer to them from the shadows under the "Moon God" sign, and walked over to his mother and sister to give them both farewell hugs.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Fujisaki flung an arm around Yato's shoulder, pulling him tight against his side. Yato yelped.

"Lucky boy you are," he whispered. His breath, rank with alcohol, stung Yato's ear. Immobilized by the sudden, unwelcome familiarity of this stranger, Yato's muscles locked up. He watched Fujisaki's eyes rake over Hiyori's back, lingering in the dips and curves with almost pornographic detail.

"She's really… _something_ ," he murmured, his voice a poisonous drawl.

Yato's stomach lurched, and he threw Fujisaki's arm off his shoulder. At that moment, Hiyori turned to look back at them. Her smile grew stiff as her eyes darted between him and Fujisaki.

"Better say goodbye to your girlfriend," Fujisaki said with a vicious chuckle, and he stalked away.

Yato's brain was boiling with too much rage and disgust to think clearly. He strode over to Hiyori and grabbed her hand, steering her to stand in front of him so his body was between hers and the place Fujisaki had been standing—just in case he were still on the prowl.

"What happened?" she whispered. There was a frantic edge to her voice, and Yato suddenly realized Mrs. Iki and Hiyori's grandparents were now watching them—watching them say goodbye.

Watching the two of them—a young couple supposedly in love—say goodbye.

Shit.

"Nothing," he replied, unconvincingly. He jerked his head to indicate their audience. "Um. We're—they're…"

Hiyori gave the tiniest of nods. "I know," she mumbled, only one corner of her mouth moving.

"So should we—?"

Her face was the color of an eggplant. Yato knew he couldn't look much better. "Yeah," she choked out. "Yeah, we should."

His heart was frozen between beats.

"Um. Um…okay." He was losing his footing, eyes darting in panic between her eyes and her mouth. "I'm just. I'm gonna— _mfh!_ "

As he had rambled, Hiyori raised herself on tiptoes and smashed their lips together. She grabbed the lapels of his—Kazuma's—jacket to steady herself, and suddenly she was there, kissing him. He smelled her, like soap and cinnamon and lilac, felt her against him in the way he'd craved for months. His body and brain locked with a snap, the overwhelming and intense nearness of her more than he could process, or comprehend, or _stand_.

Hiyori was kissing him. The thing had happened. The dream that had danced beyond his reach for so long, so very, very long, and as the seconds ticked by, Yato's awareness of how wrong this had gone—the quiet voice (growing increasingly louder), that he was fucking it up more than should be possible, the fact that they were being witnessed by her family, her _grandparents_ , the feeling that this should not be happening, it shouldn't be like this, _it shouldn't be like this—_

And then her lips separated from his. The kiss was over.

Hiyori lowered herself from her tiptoes. It had been maybe three seconds.

Yato looked at her eyes—his own had remained wide open through the whole thing—fluttering open slowly, the butterfly softness of her eyelashes that had just now been against his cheek. He swallowed loudly.

His lips felt like sandpaper, and they _burned_.

"See you later," she said under her breath, and then she was walking away from him and joining her parents, and Mr. Iki was taking the keys from the valet, and then she was inside the car, and it had driven away.

Yato pressed his hands into his pockets. He looked around for the rest of the group, but they were gone. The Iki grandparents had been spirited off in their own vehicle, and Fujisaki had disappeared too, melting into the darkness like he had been part of it.


	4. The 'Date'

Yato stared at the phone in his hand. His thumb had been hovering over the "dial" button for the better part of two minutes. Yukine pushed the bedroom door open, and with a yelp, Yato flung the phone across the room.

" _Knock?"_ he screeched. Yukine gave him a withering look, dragging his eyes from Yato to the phone lying facedown on the floor.

"You were doing something stupid," he said. It was more of an observation than a question.

Yato reached into his hair and pulled a clump of bangs over his forehead. He exhaled. "Last night went…less than perfect."

Even with the hair across his eyes, he could _feel_ Yukine's smirk. "And who could have foreseen that?" he asked snidely.

Yato glared at him through his bangs.

"I just thought I should talk to her about it," he admitted, after a second of expectant silence. "So it won't be so rocky the next time. We could…work on our story. Just so we're not met with any surprises."

Yukine nodded in thought. "That is a smart plan."

Yato's head snapped up, because for once, it didn't sound like Yukine was making fun of him. "It is?" he said in a bewildered voice.

Yukine didn't answer immediately. Instead he walked over, plucked the phone off the floor, and handed it back to Yato with a mocking gleam in his eye.

" _If_ you can call her." Each word was a direct jab into Yato's bruised ego, and he snatched the phone back in irritation.

"Of course I can call her," he snarled, punching the dial button before he gave himself a chance to chicken out for the umpteenth time.

As the other end of the line rang, Yato's heart climbed into his ears, but he told himself it wasn't. Because this? This was a normal thing friends did. And he was friends with Hiyori now. They were friends. They got along well. Just friends, running a con on her family. Just friends, who sometimes kissed each other, and who, afterwards, found it impossible to think of anything else. And it was nice to be Hiyori's friend, because she was thoughtful, and funny, and sweet, and because she smelled like gardens, and because when he spoke to her she had this look on her face that made his every word seem important and memorable, and because he wanted very, _very_ badly to kiss her again, except not in front of her parents, but somewhere else, dim and magical and private, and maybe then when he kissed her he would be able to say a few of the things that quivered in winged frenzy against his breastbone when he was near her, and maybe _then—_

"Hello?"

Yato was yanked back to earth, disoriented and blushing.

"Hey," he said. A stupid grin melted across his face at the sound of her voice. He was pleased to hear that his own sounded quite deep and husky. Yukine rolled his eyes.

When Hiyori didn't immediately reply, Yato said: "It's me." The grin evaporated. _Nice. Way to go._ He kneaded a knuckle into his eye.

Yukine rolled his eyes again, so hard that his whole head moved. Then he backed out of the room, mouthing "good luck" as he quietly shut the door behind him.

There was a scuffling on Hiyori's end of the line, as though she were rustling through papers.

"Sorry," she said. Her voice was coming thin and distant, like she had set the phone down somewhere in the room with her. There was a lot more noise, then a loud sound that might have been a door.

"Sorry again," she said after a few more seconds. Her voice was much clearer now, and Yato could easily imagine the frown pulling at her lips. "I forgot how much crap I left lying around my old room."

"Crap?"

"High school worksheets, mostly. Though I did just find a piece of notebook paper covered entirely in unflattering doodles of my bio teacher. No one's eyebrows should look like that."

Yato stifled a snort. There was silence on the line for a few seconds. Then Hiyori let her breath out, crackling static in his ear.

"So," she said. "Last night."

Yato winced. "Yeah…I'm. Um. I'm _really_ sorry—"

"No, no," she interrupted. "It worked beautifully. My parents were beyond fooled."

Yato struggled to not sound incredulous when he said: "Really?"

She sighed again. Despite the news of their success, she sounded low and dejected.

"Yep. On top of that, my mom loves you so much she wants to invite you over." She paused. "To our house."

Yato's gut clenched. "Oh."

"Exactly." Hiyori gave a soft, nervous laugh. Something bloomed within Yato's chest at the sound. He fought to trample it as he said:

"Well—do you, um, want to still want to…to keep _this_ up?"

"Of course!" Her reply was instantaneous. "The more they think I'm off the market entirely, the better my life will be in the long run."

Yato's mind jumped to Fujisaki, and his hungry, reflectionless eyes stripping the meat off Hiyori's body.

"Yes," he said firmly. "I think you're right."

For a minute, they were both silent.

"So, uh. Do you want to to…hang out?"

Yato heard himself ask the question before he could stop his mouth from forming it. He winced with his whole body. For a full three seconds, the silence roared against his ear. He entertained serious thoughts of impaling himself on a curtain rod.

"Sure," said Hiyori.

Yato nearly dropped the phone.

"Sure!" he repeated. He coaxed his mouth into a neutral line, so she wouldn't hear how hard he was grinning.

"It'll be good to talk about our cover," she said, before he could say more. "So we don't have any more calls that are quite _that_ close."

A bit of his grin melted into a small puddle at the bottom of his gut. "…Right."

"Do you like coffee?" she asked.

"I _love_ coffee." He did not love coffee. It was, at best, a passing acquaintanceship.

Hiyori's voice brightened. "Perfect! I'll meet you at Heaven Roastery? Twenty minutes?"

"Yep!" he said. "I love their…uh…" He stumbled through a rapid and completely silent Google search, discovered that the roastery was a staggeringly overpriced café about four blocks from his house, and scanned the online menu, "I love their…white…lavender mocha."

He wrinkled his nose, realizing that he was now locked into ordering a six-dollar drink that sounded like it would be served in a flowerpot.

Hiyori's voice was bemused. "Really?"

He was committed to it. Once again, his mouth took the reins.

"Yeah. They totally know me there. When I walk in they're all like, 'Hey, it's the lavender mocha guy'."

Yato fisted one hand in his hair, yanking some of it out. _What are you doing, what are you doing, what are you—_

"Wow, I go there all the time and I've never seen you!"

"Haha. That's crazy." He slumped against the wall, letting his forehead knock against it with a dull thud.

"Well, then." Hiyori paused. "I'll see you soon?"

Yato, pressing his face against the wall, stopped himself from ripping out some more of his hair. "Yep! See you soon."

He heard her hung up, and let the phone slide from his fingers. It clattered to the floor. As soon as he heard the noise, Yukine flung the door open again, not even bothering to hide how eagerly he'd been eavesdropping.

"How did it—" He stopped short, surveying the broken man in front of him. His tone shifted completely. "Okay. What happened."

Yato gripped his hair with both hands, digging his forehead into the wall. "The _lavender mocha guy_ ," he whispered in horror.

The next moment, he snatched the phone from the floor, threw on a jacket, and combed his fingers through his hair to reduce some of the damage he had caused in his emotional turbulence.

"I have to go," he said in response to his roommate's confused sputtering. He rushed out the door, slamming it behind him.

The house shook on its foundations, leaving Yukine with the sense that he had just witnessed the aftermath of a natural disaster.

: : :

Hiyori arrived at the café four minutes early. She hadn't realized she was expecting to get there ahead of Yato, but she couldn't hide the jolt of surprise when she saw him already sitting at one of the round window tables. The door shut behind her, and the bell attached to it tinkled softly. Yato's head turned, and their eyes met.

The bubble of surprise, rather than dissipating in her nerves, blossomed like ink in water. Hiyori wasn't sure it even _was_ surprise anymore. It was turning into something else—something that tingled under her skin when he looked at her, or when he smiled at her.

Like he was right now.

"You got here quickly," she commented, sitting down across from him. She tried not to think too much about how warm her face had gotten, and kept her eyes fixed on his hands, which rested on the table in front of him. His thumbs were active, drumming on the pastel mosaic of the tabletop. He had sharp, long fingers. The delicate skeletal architecture of the bones was almost miraculous.

Hiyori had never noticed them before. She had never looked.

Angry heat bloomed across her face and neck, and she tore her eyes away from his hands, glaring at the menu behind the coffee bar like it had personally insulted her.

"I didn't have anything else to do," Yato said. Hiyori couldn't decide if it was phrased in admission or condescension.

"Mm," she said. She kept her eyes fixed on the menu and started to wonder if her cheeks would ever cool down.

Yato's drink arrived. The waitress, her expression bewildered, set it down in front of him. He shot her a meaningful glance.

"Uh. Here's your usual," she said hastily.

"Thanks, Aiha." He beamed at her, which sent her scuttling back behind the counter, the dusting of a blush on her face that had most definitely not been there before. Hiyori, her eyes still burning a hole through the menu, did not notice any of this.

Yato took an experimental sip of his white lavender mocha (which had not arrived in a flowerpot, but in an ornamental mason jar with a sprig of lavender decorating the rim), wrinkled his nose, and set it back on the table. At the soft clink, Hiyori looked back at him.

"So," he said, then hesitated. His thumbs took up their rhythm again, and a crease started to form between his eyebrows.

Hiyori cleared her throat louder than she needed to, as though doing so would help clear the air.

"I'm sorry," she said.

Yato's thumbs went still. "You're sorry?" he repeated.

"For…the, um. For kissing you like that." She lowered her eyes to the table in front of her. "I'm sorry. It was…I panicked."

He was silent for a few seconds.

"It's okay," he said finally, but there was no backbone to it. Hiyori felt that it _wasn't_ okay, and that, furthermore, she had injured him by apologizing.

"Hey! We would have had to do that at some point, right?" he said quickly. She looked back up at him, and he was smiling again. It was a warm, crooked smile, and something in the soft place beneath her ribs brightened like a flower under the sun.

"Yeah, probably," she admitted, sheepishly.

"Though I didn't really think it would be in front of your mom, your grandparents, your stalker—"

Hiyori snorted so loudly that the waitress looked up at them from behind the coffee bar.

"Can it be called 'stalking' if it's sanctioned by both my immediate and extended family?" she asked. It was only half a joke.

Above his coffee, Yato raised his eyebrows. "Does he tend to show up in places or situations where you aren't expecting him?"

Hiyori stared at her hands, frowning. "Well..."

"Does he act invasive and disrespectful of your privacy and personal space?"

Her frown deepened. Her eyes flickered up, catching Yato's. His were wide and earnest. She couldn't answer.

"And—most importantly—do _you_ want to be around him?"

Hiyori gave a brief, vigorous shake of her head. She disliked Fujisaki with every nerve in her system; the mere suggestion of his presence, even now, made her gut tighten with anxiety. She had never felt safe around him. She harbored the firm belief that he would pounce on her throat if they were ever alone together.

"I don't," she said softly. She hardly noticed the quiet clink of the coffee cup against the table as the waitress set it down next to her hand.

Yato set his own cup on the table and spoke to her, lowering his voice so the waitress, who had been glancing curiously at them for the last several minutes, couldn't hear.

"I…do have an idea of what you must be feeling. I hope that doesn't sound presumptuous. I…I just—" He cleared his throat, like there was something physical blocking the words from coming out. "I know how it feels to think your own life isn't in your hands. I don't wish that on you, Hiyori."

A rush of warmth pooled in her chest, but was just as swiftly driven out by a wave of shame. She shook her head again, and took a sip of her drink before answering.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You probably didn't expect this to turn into a therapy session when you called me."

For a millisecond, disappointment sagged on Yato's face. Then it disappeared, so quickly it could have been a trick of the light, and he was grinning at her again.

"Hey, you're the client! I can play the therapist quite well, if that's what interests you."

"Have you had to do it often?" she inquired.

"Well, I live with Kazuma."

Hiyori stirred sugar into her latte, which was bitter. "Is he the quiet one with the glasses?"

"Glasses, yes. Quiet? _No_. I have to listen to his girl problems. Endlessly."

Hiyori tried to remember the defining features of the bespectacled young man she sometimes saw walking toward the bus stop, his nose invariably stuffed either into a thick textbook or a sheaf of academic articles. He was familiar to her, somehow. Where had she _seen_ him—?

"Oh!" She rapped her spoon on the table, and Yato jumped. " _That's_ who he is!"

At his look of consternation, she explained. "My lab partner—she mentioned him. He's her physics tutor. She says he's really nice."

Yato leaned across the table. His grin had a dangerous edge to it.

"This lab partner…what's her name?"

Hiyori frowned. "Well, she puts 'Bishamon' on all her quizzes, but everyone just calls her Viina. Why? Do you know her?"

"Not from Eve. Did she say to you why she thinks he's nice?"

Thoroughly puzzled, Hiyori tried to remember the brief, casual conversation from two weeks ago.

"Um. She said…he doesn't charge for tutoring. She said he just does it to keep the knowledge fresh in his mind—and to help other people, of course. The word 'noble' might have been used at one point."

Yato looked for all the world like the cat who had swallowed the largest, juiciest, most unlucky of canaries. Hiyori narrowed her eyes.

"Why?"

He sipped delicately from his cup, eyes still crinkled at the corners from his Cheshire smile.

"No reason, really. I just thought I'd pass along a compliment."

: : :

Yato pinched his chin between two fingers, his eyebrows scrunching together in concentration. They had been sitting at the café table for the last hour, ironing out the rest of the kinks in their "relationship" that had yet to pose the most serious future problems.

"Okay…I think we're solid on all the most important points," he said.

Hiyori raised an eyebrow and set both her elbows on the table. "What was our first date?"

"Coffee. Just like today."

"And how did you ask me to be your girlfriend?"

Yato smirked. "With chocolates and a dozen roses."

"Very imaginative." She snorted. "Wouldn't want anyone to suspect us of cliché."

"It's not cliché! It's _classic_."

Hiyori shook her head ruefully. "At the very least, my mother would eat that up. Speaking of which…" She made an unpleasant face.

"Remember how I mentioned she talked to me about having you come over sometime? To ' _bond_?' I think you really won her over with that calligraphy talk."

"She doesn't want me to _cook_ , does she?"

"Probably not since you boiled a rat into my spaghetti."

Yato blinked, his mouth twitching. "Oh. Right."

The waitress, who had come to bus their third round of lattés, scurried away with a horrified look on her face. Hiyori was silent for a few moments, and felt Yato's curious eyes on her.

"Did I forget something important?" he inquired.

"No," she said quickly. Her voice was casual. "But—are we serious?"

Yato stared at her. "Serious…?"

"Are we _serious_." She cleared her throat. "Our relationship. How…how much have we—uh. You know…"

"Oh! You mean have we had sex?" Yato blurted out. Hiyori shushed him violently, once again blushing to the tips of her ears.

"Do you have to _shout?!_ " she whispered fiercely.

Yato moderated his voice, but the waitress was still ogling them from across the room.

"Why the hell would your family be asking questions about that?!" he demanded.

Hiyori closed her eyes, sinking back in her chair. "It's not just my family," she whispered in misery. Yato leaned across the table to hear her lowered voice.

"What do you mean?"

"It's my—my roommates."

She opened her eyes again to see that Yato looking at her with a mixture of disbelief and sheer horror.

"You didn't even tell your _friends_?!"

Hiyori bristled.

"I've known Ami and Yama since we were babies! They know my whole family; my parents think of them as their own daughters." Her back slid down the chair, and her voice began to crack higher and more desperate. "I can't risk them finding out that this whole thing"—she motioned vaguely between their chests—"is just a sham."

Yato was silent.

Hiyori worried she had somehow offended him, even though nothing she said had been untrue. If they were going to pull off this absurd of a hoax, they had to pull it off thoroughly.

When Yato at last spoke, it was in a thoughtful, subdued tone.

"So then, how about we go with: 'not serious'."

Hiyori looked up at him from where she sat sprawled halfway down her chair. He smiled as her eyes met his.

"After all, this isn't going to be forever. If anyone asks, we're taking it slow." He reached across the table and tapped one finger next to her hand. "Sound good?"

Hiyori exhaled, and some of the tension that had clamped around her lungs melted away.

"Yes. That does sound good."

She hauled herself up in her seat, flashing him a smile of apology. "Sorry. I didn't mean to show you my crazy." She cleared her throat. "Again."

Yato laughed outright. When she gave him a betrayed look, he held up his hands in a gesture of pacification.

"You have no idea how far you are from _actual_ crazy," he said, chuckling.

Hiyori looked at him for another moment. His face was so full of honesty: a true-hearted admiration that she wasn't prepared for, and her stomach gave a not-entirely-unpleasant lurch.

She set her cup down for the last time.

"Do you want to leave?"

: : :

It was pouring.

"Well, shit," said Yato. He and Hiyori had ducked under the thin, treacherous awning of a closed Chinese restaurant to escape the deluge, but not before they were both thoroughly, miserably soaked. The storm, which had rushed at them out of a cloudless sky, was quickly overwhelming the storm drains and sloshing in small waves against the sidewalk. Hiyori feared for her socks.

"We could run," she said half-heartedly. They were still a good block and a half away from their respective houses. The soupy, scowling blanket of gray above them gave a threatening rumble.

Yato shook out his hair like a dog. "You might drown," he observed.

Hiyori bridled. "I'm a _very_ good swimmer."

He looked up from under his dripping hair, then pointed across the street to a small shop that crouched between two taller buildings. Its electric sign winked at them through the rain.

"Neither of us have to swim. Look at that."

Hiyori looked. The glass front of the store was dim and streaked with rain, but through it she saw a window display of neon-pink umbrellas. She squared her shoulders and clutched her thin shirt tighter around her shoulders.

"Run for it?" she said. Yato gave a quick nod. Then the two of them burst from under the awning, splashing across the flooded street to the door of the shop. A little bell clanged irritably as they barged inside, sloshing half a gallon of water inside along with them.

Hiyori picked the nearest of the umbrellas and took it to the front, where a tall, grumpy-looking young man who could have easily passed as a member of the mafia was slouched over the register. Before she could put it on the counter, Yato grabbed the umbrella from her hand, then dug into an inner pocket of his tracksuit to unearth a shabby wallet. She made a sharp noise of protest.

"It's a cheap umbrella," he said, shoving it across the counter. The man at the register scowled at him, then shook the stray drops of water off the umbrella before scanning its barcode.

"Besides, it's the least I can do, considering…everything." His voice was casual, but the color of his cheeks was heightened.

Hiyori reddened, remembering that she hadn't yet paid him for any of his…services.

The man at the counter cleared his throat with a gruff " _hehm._ "

"Sorry, man." Yato flung some cash at him, and the man took it, his deepening frown carving lines into his face that made him look like a murderous gargoyle.

"You haven't been here in a while," the man said, managing to make the statement sound like a dire accusation.

Yato shrugged vaguely. "Yeah…work. How's Kofuku?"

"Terrible. She wants you to come over for dinner."

"Tell her I don't want to get myself poisoned."

"It might do you some good."

Yato looked affronted, and snatched the umbrella from the counter with a flourish before offering it to Hiyori, who stood awkwardly off to the side during the exchange. The man behind the counter turned his terrifying gaze upon her, effectively turning her spine to jelly. Yato remembered himself.

"Oh, Daikoku, this is Hiyori. She's…"

He trailed off as he turned to look at her, his mouth open and an expression of naked panic in his eyes. Hiyori smiled encouragingly at him, trying to ignore how Daikoku's thick eyebrows were steadily rising higher on his forehead.

"…She's wet."

Hiyori gave Yato a withering look, and he mouthed "I'm really sorry." Daikoku's eyebrows had disappeared into his hair.

"I can see that," he said dubiously.

There was a horrible silence.

"Okay! Well, great to see you, man. Tell Kofuku I'll stop by with a pizza some night. Bye!"

Yato said all of this in one breath, shoved the umbrella into Hiyori's arms, and hurried out the door, causing the bell to give one last, annoyed jangle. Hiyori and Daikoku exchanged an uncomfortable look before she followed him outside.

Yato had already started walking away, and the back of his neck was the color of an eggplant.

"Did you break?" Hiyori called, splashing along in his wake on the sidewalk. When she caught up to him, she struggled a bit with the pink umbrella, at last managing to open it over both of their heads.

"No!" he said loudly. "No, I didn't break. That was just—it was weird, for a minute. I'm sorry."

For a moment, it seemed like he might say more, but he didn't, and they walked quietly in the direction of their street for the next few minutes. The downpour subsided into a surly, warm drizzle. Hiyori kept the umbrella open until they had arrived in front of their respective houses.

She was suffocating in the silence between them, and the words, which had been building in her throat for some time, finally burst free.

"You know—if this is uncomfortable for you, it doesn't have to keep going. You've already helped me more than enough. I-I completely understand if you want to—"

She choked off as Yato took the umbrella from her hand. His warm fingers closed over hers, tipping the umbrella toward her so the bell covered her head entirely, leaving his own open to the rain.

Something had changed during their walk. His nervous demeanor had vanished, washed down the gutters along with the leaves swirling past their feet. He looked at her with those very blue eyes, made so much bluer by the gray, flat darkness of the sky, and the road, and the rain. A large drop dripped from his eyebrow and splashed onto his cheek, quivering there like a freshwater tear.

"I like this job, Hiyori Iki," he said quietly.

"You…do?" Her voice cowered in her throat under the blue of those eyes. Her head was warm and light. For all she knew, it could have been floating off her shoulders.

"Yes, I do." His lips curved in a sudden, mischievous grin that momentarily stole her breath. "But in the meantime, I think I'll take this umbrella as collateral. Pink is my color."

He spun on one heel and marched toward his own front door, leaving Hiyori red and spluttering on the sidewalk.

"You _bought_ it!" she shouted after him.

But his door had already shut, and there was nothing she could do but walk up the pathway to her own house, past her roommates (who ripped their foreheads from the window and tried to look innocent), and sit down on her bed, wondering why she was still thinking of that raindrop on Yato's cheek, and whether she should have wiped it away.


	5. The Party

**content warnings for this chapter: sexual harassment; attempted sexual assault**

* * *

Hiyori, lured from her studies into the living room by the sound of precariously clinking glassware, found Ami removing her collection of comically undersized, decorative vases from the mantelpiece. She was gently folding them in bubble wrap and storing them in boxes filled to the brim with packing peanuts.

"Are you moving out?" was Hiyori's immediate, panicked question. Ami gave her a look of gentle disappointment.

"Of course not, moron. I'm just protecting my valuables from—" she waved in the general direction of the kitchen, where Yama's voice wafted to them as she talked rapidly on the phone. "— _That_."

Hiyori listened, apprehensive. After a few seconds of eavesdropping, she realized Yama was on the phone with her boyfriend, Abe. She was delivering a volley of instructions to him:

"—so make sure to bring all your frat bros or homies or whatever you call yourselves, because this _has_ to get _wild_ —"

Hiyori looked back at Ami, her eyes round with fear.

"What…what is she talking about?"

Ami shrugged, returning to her vases. "A party, sounds like."

"When?"

"Dunno. Soon."

"But why?"

Ami gave her another slightly motherly look of disapproval, and Hiyori immediately experienced the horrifying sensation of having digested her own lungs.

" _Me?!"_

Ami turned back to the vases and packing peanuts. "You can't have a birthday and not expect Yama to do something expensive and ridiculous."

Hiyori groaned, pressing both index fingers against her temples. "But my mom already _did_ something expensive and ridiculous for my birthday. I don't need this. I don't want this. I _hate_ this."

Ami placed the last vase in the box and sealed it shut with an efficient flick of the tape dispenser.

"It might not be so bad," she said demurely.

"It's a party," Hiyori hissed. " _A Yama party._ "

At that moment, Yama bounced into the room, radiant with energy and the prospect of dozens of overboozed, sweaty coeds descending on their living space within forty-eight hours.

"I heard my name?"

"Hiyori was just telling me how excited she is about the party you're planning."

Ami's betrayal cut deep, but she seemed oblivious to the pained glance Hiyori gave her.

Yama barreled full steam ahead. "One of Abe's friends is trying to make it as a DJ, so he's bringing everything he needs to set up tomorrow morning—"

" _Tomorrow?!_ " Hiyori screeched.

"Relax, girl, you don't have to worry about a thing. Just…maybe lock your bedroom door before things get started. You don't want to find anything—anyone—uh…unexpected, in there."

Ami grimaced in distaste. Hiyori didn't know whether to sit down on the floor and curl up in the fetal position, or run to her bedroom and dive under the covers to hide, shivering, until this ordeal passed.

"How many people?" she whispered, frightened to hear what the answer might be.

Yama began ticking off on her fingers: "It depends on how many of the frat guys actually show up…plus the volleyball team…plus the track team…and Abe said some guys from UOT were interested…"

At this point Hiyori did, in fact, sink to the floor. Her bangs stuck to her clammy forehead. She felt slightly sick. Yama stopped talking and crouched beside her, eyebrows knitting in concern.

"You okay?"

Hiyori peered at her accusingly from under her sweaty hair.

"You invited four hundred people over for my birthday."

Yama shook her head quickly, her ponytail snapping against her cheeks.

"No, no. Seventy-five, max. Not everyone's gonna show up, you know."

Hiyori dragged both hands down her face, pulling her cheeks tight against the bones underneath.

"But _whyyy_?" she whined. "You know my family throws a fancy dinner for my birthday every year. And you _know_ how much I hate those. _Why_ would you add another layer to what is already a hellish experience for me?"

Yama poked Hiyori's gaunt cheeks playfully.

"Because a fancy dinner party is nothing like a college party. You need to cut loose, Hiyo. Have fun. Stick your tongue down a stranger's throat. Dance on a table. Barf on someone's shoes."

Hiyori gave a shudder, slapping Yama's hands away from her face. "No. No thank you."

Yama straightened up and fixed her ponytail. Just like that, she was all business.

"Well, too late now. The plan is in motion. So prepare yourself for some serious fun, whether you like it or not."

Hiyori, desperate for an out, looked to her other friend for support. But instead of providing assistance, Ami said:

"Hey, you should invite that guy you've been seeing. What's-his-pizza-name."

Hiyori's neck gave a sharp, fatal-sounding snap as she jerked upright.

"Yato," she said in quiet terror.

Yama inhaled quickly. " _Oh!_ " she exclaimed. "I knew I was forgetting someone! Hiyori, do you want to invite him yourself, or should I leave a note on their mailbox or…?"

She trailed off. Hiyori had scrambled to her feet and was already fleeing to the front door. "I'll handle it!" she shouted.

The door slammed behind her, and the house shivered. After a beat of silence, her two friends exchanged a lengthy, meaningful glance.

Ami held her hand out, palm-up. Yama, with a sigh of regret, fished twenty dollars out of her pocket and slapped it into Ami's outstretched palm.

: : :

"You're going, right?"

Yato upended an almost-empty bag of Doritos into his open mouth, pouring the residual crumbs straight down his throat. He wiped the flecks of chip dust off his lips before answering Yukine.

"Of course I'm going. It's free food."

Yukine's lip curled. "Yeah. I should have figured."

"You should come," Yato suggested, tossing the bag aside and falling backwards onto the couch, hands propped behind his head. Yukine sat down next to the coffee table and swept a few escaped Dorito crumbs into his palm.

"Don't you think it's a bit irresponsible of you to take your underage roommate to a college party?"

Yato shrugged. "I just thought it might be nice for you to have a life outside of school, studying, and eating my food."

Yukine bristled at this implication, especially considering the circumstances under which it was uttered. He flung the Dorito crumbs at Yato's face, which were received with impenetrable nonchalance.

"For your _information_ , asshole, I have plans tomorrow night, which don't involve your stupid frat party or your stupid fake relationship."

Yato sat up, his eyes narrowing dangerously. "Plans? With whom?"

Yukine colored. "Nobody important."

"…A girl?"

"No."

"A boy?"

The blush ripened on Yukine's cheeks, spreading nearly up to the tips of his ears.

"It's none of your business," he grumbled.

Yato smirked at him for one more second, then collapsed backwards on the couch again.

"Well, have fun. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

Yukine hauled himself up from the floor, conspicuously brushing his hands off as he left the room. He didn't bother with a response. The list of things Yato wouldn't do, especially when money was involved, was alarmingly short.

Once his roommate left, Yato closed his eyes.

The first image his mind brought to him was, unshockingly, Hiyori.

Yato should have been used to it by now—how her face occupied the inside of his eyelids now more than ever. Whenever she was near him he was distracted by something subtle about her, like the way her hands played with the collar of her shirt when she was talking, or the ribbon-silk strands of hair that escaped from her ponytail and clung to her neck, or the little hiccup that escaped every time she tried to stop herself from laughing. The more time he spent with her: talking to her, thinking about her, feeling her slowly, like perfume, creep into the silences around him, the more he came to understand that this job was—mentally, emotionally, and physically—against his best interests.

Because he was more in love with Hiyori Iki than ever. And it was worse now, because she had become his friend.

"There's going to be a lot of people there," she said, her brow furrowing in apprehension.

She had of course visited to ask if he could come to the party, because now that they were fully inhabiting the fiction of their relationship, there was no way he _couldn't_ come.

"That's okay." He flashed her a grin. "I'm good with people."

Hiyori gave him a doubtful look, and he held up a finger.

"Let's not forget, I talked about calligraphy with your mom for almost twenty minutes."

She nodded, slowly. "Yeah. Yeah…I guess you'll be okay."

She straightened her spine, then reached up to rub the back of her neck. She blew a long breath out of her nose. Yato was nearly overcome with the intense and completely unacceptable urge to offer her a shoulder massage.

"Everyone's going to be drunk and dancing anyway, so it's not like we'll be under close examination," she reasoned, oblivious to his internal conflict. "At least, we _shouldn't_ be."

"Who's coming?" he asked, desperate to shift the topic and draw his attention away from the brush of her shoulder against his as they sat on the couch.

"Whoever Yama's invited. I try not to ask questions."

"But isn't this _your_ party?"

Hiyori snorted. "She's using my birthday as an excuse to throw a rager. _I_ didn't have anything to do with it."

"Well…if it's for your birthday, shouldn't you get to at least invite a few of the people _you_ want to be there?"

She opened her mouth, closed it again, and turned very red. Yato, who still couldn't allow himself to look at her, didn't notice her sudden color change.

"I mean—in theory—" she stuttered out. Taking a moment to gather her composure, she continued: "I know I give her a hard time about it, but Yama wouldn't invite anyone I couldn't stand. I _do_ trust her judgment on that."

Hiyori paused. "If…well, if _you_ wanted to invite anyone, I'm sure it would be fine," she said. "Of course, Yukine and Kazuma are welcome to come."

Yukine, who had been blatantly and unashamedly eavesdropping on the entire conversation from the hallway, dropped a pencil at the sound of his own name. The clatter as it fell to the floor sent him scurrying back to his room like a startled cat. From the kitchen, Yato and Hiyori both heard Kazuma humming along to "Toxic" as he microwaved Cup Noodles to fortify himself for his sixteenth straight hour of online chess.

"Yes," Yato said lifelessly. "They are both party animals."

: : :

Someone was hammering on Hiyori's door.

"Are you comin'?" Yama demanded through the keyhole. "Or are you jus' gonna stay in there and _suck_?!"

Hiyori grimaced. She had been procrastinating for twenty minutes already, and there was a very real chance Yama might bash down her bedroom door and yank her downstairs by force. After mentally double-checking that all the valuables in her room were safely pushed under the bed or into drawers, she pulled her fingers against her ponytail, loosening the tie and letting hair fall around her shoulders. It was the only effort she made to appear more festive. There was little, after all, that this party held for her.

Yama pounded on the door again, but the sound was almost drowned out by the music thumping through the floorboards, pulsing against the soles of Hiyori's feet. Abe's friend had brought his own massive speakers, and she felt every throb of the powerful bass in her stomach.

"Coming!" Hiyori called back. There was no response. Apparently, Yama had already abandoned her efforts.

As soon as Hiyori opened the door, the noise hit her like a wall of concrete. The bass pumped wildly, layered under a jumpy electropop remix of some radio hit. Almost as soon as she set foot outside her bedroom door, Hiyori had to edge her way past a couple violently making out against the wall.

"'Scuse me," she muttered, squeezing around them to head for the stairs.

As she slipped by, Hiyori saw that Yama was one-half of the embracing couple. Well, that certainly explained her silence. It was too dim to see much in the hallway, so Hiyori could only hope that the other participant was her boyfriend.

She made her way to the top of the stairs, hoping desperately that Ami was somewhere nearby to provide a safe haven. However, as Hiyori peered down onto the first floor, she had a hard time seeing much of anything. The lights were low, and it was hard to read anyone's features from that distance and angle. There was a hum of voices and laughter beneath the music.

Then, something shone among the moving bodies. A long, bright swish of gold moved up the dark stairs toward her. "Hiyori!" said a girl's voice, and suddenly Hiyori was looking at a familiar—and extremely beautiful—face.

Even though she stood two steps below her on the stairs, Viina still came exactly to Hiyori's height. She held two plastic cups in front of her, and before she could think to respond, Hiyori found herself accepting one of them.

"Hi," she said in bewilderment.

"I didn't know it was your birthday! I felt so bad that I didn't say anything in lab yesterday. I would have at least done the worksheet for you."

Viina's wide, genuine smile sent a rush of warmth through Hiyori's chest. She answered with a grin of her own.

"No, it's fine. I didn't really want to mention it to anyone, but…well…you see how well _that_ worked out." She made a wide, circular gesture with the hand holding the drink. Viina gave a throaty laugh.

"I did have a feeling this probably wasn't something you planned."

Hiyori grimaced, and took a sip of the drink in her hand. It was some sort of punchy cocktail: heavy on the pineapple and light on the liquor. It was really good.

"Is it…safe, down there?" she asked hesitantly. Viina's eyes darted across her face, then softened in understanding.

"Yes," she said frankly, and Hiyori sighed in relief.

Viina's lips twitched. "It's mostly just loud. I think your DJ is _really_ excited to use that equipment."

Hiyori squinted toward the corner of the room—the area from which the punishing noise emanated. Through the crowd and the low light, she was just able to make out a tiny figure next to the sound equipment, bobbing excitedly along to the raucous beat.

"Well, at least someone's having fun," she said. Viina snorted, then took Hiyori by the elbow, drawing her down the stairs. To Hiyori's look of questioning surprise, she said playfully:

"Come on. There has to be _one_ person here you wouldn't mind hanging out with."

At that, Hiyori found herself scanning the milling people for someone tall, with unkempt dark hair, or for anyone in gym clothes, but no one stood out.

She told herself the vicious knot in her gut was from excitement, or nerves, or even the quick-acting alcohol in the punch. But it was definitely not disappointment. Definitely, _definitely_ not.

She allowed Viina to pull her down the stairs and into the crowd of people, some of whom were no longer faceless. Hiyori caught a glimpse of Ami, who had sequestered herself in the middle of a group of bespectacled undergraduates passionately discussing particle physics over the punch bowl. They passed through the center of the living room, which functioned as a dance floor, where she was shocked to see Ebisu—the star student from last quarter's economics class—apparently having a dance-off with Takemikazuchi, whom she had only seen a few times in passing, and who always gave the impression of having just gotten away with first-degree murder.

Hiyori was being steered by her lab partner toward a small circle of other girls, none of whom she recognized. They were all similar to Viina in appearance, though none of them were quite so tall, slender, or unbearably gorgeous. Hiyori felt herself shrinking and becoming more average-looking by comparison.

"These are some teammates of mine," Viina said as the girls turned to look at them. "Kinuha, Tsuyu, and Mayu."

Hiyori nodded and smiled at each of them, desperately trying to remember what team Viina had said she was on, and whether she would be able to fake her way through a conversation about any sport on the planet.

"H-hi," she said, her voice lost beneath the wallops of the bass.

The four took stock of her discomfort, and a look of mutual agreement passed between them. With preternatural speed, Hiyori found herself tucked into a safe corner of the room with a fresh drink in her hand and chatting happily with Mayu, who possessed a cornucopia of side-splitting anecdotes. A few minutes into her story about a summer babysitting job, a wandering herd of wild goats, several modest bribes, and a gallon of antifreeze, laughter had driven the anxiety straight from Hiyori's mind.

She stayed there for a long while, protected from the rest of the party, and only occasionally sinking into brief thoughts of who had not yet arrived.

: : :

Yato was hours late to the party because of only one reason, and that reason was currently pressing his forehead against the window of Hiyori's house, cupping his hands around his eyes in order to see better.

"Do you think she's here?" he whispered.

Yato yanked Kazuma back by the collar before someone inside the house could witness his behavior.

"If we go _in_ , maybe you can find her," he said, trying to mask his rising irritation.

Kazuma looked so stricken at the thought of actually meeting Viina in a casual environment that Yato took pity on him. He took his roommate by the shoulders, giving him a vigorous shake.

"Listen, man. It'll be fine. Just pretend you're talking about chemistry or something."

At the word "chemistry," Kazuma's nostrils flared. The look on his face suggested that he was a hair's breadth from darting into oncoming traffic.

"I don't know if I can talk to her about…normal things," he confessed, his voice weak with terror.

Yato let go of his shoulders after a final encouraging shake. "Just ask her to dance. Then you don't have to talk."

And he walked inside, leaving Kazuma standing on the welcome mat, looking like a stake had been driven through his heart.

As soon as he was inside, Yato felt the bass pounding in his teeth. The house was full of people he didn't know, talking to each other, drinking out of plastic cups, laughing with loud, liquor-soaked voices. A claustrophobic crush of people in the next room over suggested that was where dancing might be happening. He scanned the room, hoping to find Hiyori somewhere close. At the very least, he could say hi, put in an obligatory appearance as her partner, and leave before things got hairy.

Yato scooted along the wall, making progress toward the room with the loudest music and the most people. As soon as he eased himself through the door, his eyes fell on the tiny figure bouncing between the enormous speakers in the corner of the room. It was only when he saw the shock of pink curls that his eyes widened with recognition.

As though sensing his presence, Kofuku caught Yato's gaze. She shrieked, flinging herself through the crowd to crash into his arms.

" _Yato!?"_ she wailed. "I missed yoooouuuu!"

Yato squeezed her back for the barest of seconds, then pushed her off him, holding her at arm's length. A few people had looked up at the outburst, but their attention was quickly diverted.

Yato took hold of Kofuku's elbow, pulling her toward the edge of the room and out of the speakers' blast zone.

"What is _this_?" With a broad sweep of his arm he encompassed the speakers, mixer, and the party in general. His incredulous question had no dampening effect on Kofuku's manic enthusiasm.

"I got a job! I got paid $6.50 to be the DJ for this party!"

Yato stared at her, unable to process any part of that statement.

"Do you even know _how_?"

Kofuku nodded vigorously. "Yep. The guy who paid me showed me the 'ON' button and the volume."

"And he paid you $6.50?"

"Yep!"

Yato didn't have it in his heart to tell Kofuku that a stranger had given her his pocket change, planted her behind the mixer, and turned on a playlist.

"Hey! Daikoku's here too!" Kofuku wheeled around, reached into the crowd, and hauled her boyfriend out of nowhere. "Daikoku, look who showed up!" she crowed.

Daikoku, who stood head and shoulders above the rest of the people around them and looked, as usual, more like a hitman than a small business owner, gave Yato a curt nod.

"Hey man," he grunted.

Yato returned the nod and the grunt, praying to whoever was listening that Daikoku would refrain from mentioning their encounter at the shop. Kofuku would pounce on that like a tiger kitten on a freshly killed gazelle. He cast around for something to talk about.

"Is there food anywhere here?" he asked. Kofuku shrugged. Daikoku pointed toward an open door on their right. Two girls walked through, carrying plastic cups in each hand.

"Not sure about food, but it looks like the drinks are in there."

The three of them made their way to the door, which opened into a kitchen/dining area that was slightly quieter and better lit than the room they had just left. Even with the crowd, the noise, and the mess, the interior of the house managed to appear luxurious and wealthy. Yato couldn't help mentally tallying the differences between Hiyori's living situation and his own, and felt his insides sink.

"Chips!" Kofuku cried, and stuffed half the contents of the bag into her face. She was already vacuuming up the crumbs hiding in the crinkles of the bag by the time Yato and Daikoku had poured themselves drinks.

"You are like a little baby," Yato said. "Watch this."

He opened a second bag without looking at the label, tipped back his head, and poured two thirds of it down his throat. After a few seconds of crunching, he gagged, water leaking out of his eyes. He choked again, and a little puff of red powder escaped his mouth. Tears streamed down his face as he swiped at his lips in agony. Kofuku erupted in insane giggles and pointed at the "LAVA HOT GHOST CHILI™" flavor brand stamped broadly across the front of the chip bag.

Daikoku patted Yato on the back as his throat exploded in flames, and a shower of half-chewed Lava Hot Ghost Chili™ chips sprayed onto the floor.

"Gross, dude," Daikoku said sympathetically.

: : :

The pineapple punch drink was stronger than it tasted. A lovely, bubbling contentment had spread through Hiyori's limbs as she downed the rest of her cup. She was having such a nice time that she almost managed to forget the one person she invited hadn't yet arrived.

Almost.

As though she had telepathic access to Hiyori's thoughts, Yama demanded: "Isn't your _boyyyfrieeend_ coming?"

She dragged the vowels out for several miles, slinging a strangulating arm around Hiyori's neck and collapsing against her shoulder. Hiyori swatted at her drunk friend's face harder than was necessary, her comment having struck a nerve.

"Shut up," she said. "He's probably here. Somewhere."

"Aren't you gonna go _fiiiiind_ him?"

"No." Hiyori settled onto the arm of the chair where she was perched, on the outskirts of a conversation between Tsuyu and Viina. "I'm comfy here."

Yama shrugged. Despite the haze of alcohol, her eyes were narrow and glinting with mischief. "Suit yourself," she crooned.

Hiyori, irked, suddenly stood up. The floor under her dipped like the deck of a ship, but she caught herself before pitching forward.

"I want another drink," she announced to the room at large, refusing to look at Yama, who sank, giggling, into her abandoned seat.

Hiyori marched crookedly over to the table with the enormous punch bowl, which was near the door to the kitchen. As she pushed blindly through the crowd, she knocked into someone, hard. The empty plastic cup flew out of her grip, but a hand shot from nowhere to catch it.

"This yours?" said a voice from somewhere slightly above her head. Hiyori blinked wildly as she looked up, wishing the floor would stop rocking.

Standing in front of her and holding her cup, she saw the very last person she wanted to run into at this party.

"Oh god," she groaned. "Why are _you_ here?"

Fujisaki frowned. "That's…not exactly the hospitable reception I hoped for. I received an invitation, of course."

"I doubt that," Hiyori snapped. She took a step away, trying to strategize a safe exit.

"I really don't feel like socializing at the moment, so if you'll just excuse me—"

She snatched her cup away from him, and began to push toward the punch bowl, but Fujisaki took hold of her elbow before she could move very far. She shot him a filthy glare when his hand didn't immediately retract.

"Here," he said. He released her elbow, holding his hand up in a placating gesture. "I got this for myself, but you can have it. I'll get another one."

His other hand held a plastic cup, identical to her empty one. This one was full of punch. Hiyori hesitated for a second, then grabbed it from him, slopping some of it onto her hand.

"Thanks," she muttered. She stalked back to the couch, leaving Fujisaki behind in the crowd. She didn't see the smile that slipped across his mouth like poison.

When she got back to her seat, Yama had vanished. Viina had also left, so Hiyori took her place on the couch next to Tsuyu.

"Someone asked her to dance," Tsuyu said in explanation. Then she rolled her eyes. "For the twelfth time."

Hiyori peered into the press of dancing figures in the next room, and saw a flash of bright hair. Shaken from her encounter with Fujisaki, she took a large, fortifying gulp of her drink.

This batch was stronger. A lot stronger. Hiyori winced as a bitter streak of cold fire raced down her throat.

She wasn't sure if it was annoyance with Fujisaki or the vague cloud of disappointment that had been hanging over her for most of the evening, but she relished the dizzy, insane euphoria that hit her system minutes after the punch did.

"I wan' dance," she informed Tsuyu—or thought she did, before turning her head to see that Tsuyu had been lured away. She saw her nearby, talking animatedly to a man who looked far, _far_ too old for the party. Hiyori slowly came to recognize him as her literature professor, Dr. Tenjin.

"Why is _he_ here?" she asked aloud. Her words came out slurred and incomprehensible.

"I think the real question is, why aren't you dancing?"

The voice above her cut through the fog in Hiyori's ears. She couldn't place it at first, but as someone took her hand and pulled her up from the couch, she couldn't locate her feet and ended up crashing against a tall, solid body.

"Looks like someone's a lightweight," said Fujisaki's voice playfully, still from somewhere above her. Hiyori didn't immediately associate the voice with the person holding her up.

"Hmm-mm." She tried to shake her head "no," but her neck was slow and her head was heavy. The delightful bubbles in her veins had turned to sludge, coursing through her like mud through a drowned river. Through the chest of the person holding her, she felt the vibration of a low chuckle against her cheek.

Her limbs dragged. She was so slow, so sleepy…so heavy, unbearably heavy.

Fujisaki's voice spoke again, right against her face, so close she could smell his sour breath:

"Why don't we take you someplace quiet?"

: : :

"Who're you looking for?"

Kofuku's quick eyes intercepted Yato's wandering gaze as he scanned the crowd. He looked back at her with a start, and brought his cup to his lips to hide the guilty twitch of his mouth, which still burned from the Lava Hot Ghost Chili™ dust.

"No one," he said guiltily.

Kofuku pursed her lips and crinkled her eyebrows. Her expression, which always lent itself so readily to mischief, became positively alarming as she stared him down and waited for the truth. Yato broke.

"I was invited by someone," he admitted. "I'm looking for her."

Kofuku squealed. She wrapped herself around his arm, starving for more details. "Ooo _ooohhh,_ who?!"

"You don't know her."

"I might!"

"You _definitely_ don—"

Yato broke off suddenly, because he had seen something.

What he saw was this: Kouto Fujisaki standing on the other side of the room, his wolfish gaze trained on Yato. He had one arm wrapped around the waist of a girl who slumped against him, her head lolling on his shoulder. Yato's eyes passed over Fujisaki to the girl, who looked half-asleep. Even from where Yato stood, across the loud, pulsing room, her posture and attitude radiated terrifying vulnerability.

The blood drained from Yato's face so quickly that he felt dizzy.

The girl was Hiyori.

He looked at Fujisaki. As soon as their eyes met, Fujisaki's hand dropped low on Hiyori's hip and he licked his thin lips, winking at Yato in lewd victory. His hand crept lower. Yato looked back at Hiyori: at her vacant eyes, her drooping head. For a second, it looked like she was trying to push against Fujisaki, trying to dislodge the arm snaking around her.

The noise of the party dropped away, replaced by a dull, aching buzz that originated somewhere in his sinuses.

Then, the room went red.


	6. The Rather Small Bed

**content warnings for this chapter: brief scene of moderately graphic violence**

* * *

He heard shouting. Screams.

A splitting shock of pain against his right knuckles.

Yato's eyes focused again, and he saw Fujisaki, laid out on the floor beneath him, cradling the pulpy wreckage of his face. Yato saw his own hands yank Fujisaki's away from his face, and his nose was all wrong—an off-center, ghastly triangle, spurting blood against napkin-white skin. A sick, rusty smell filled Yato's nose and the back of his throat.

His closed fist came down on Fujisaki's face again, exploding against his ear and snapping his neck to the left.

It was at this point Yato realized he was the one shouting.

Someone dragged him off Fujisaki's inert body. Two people. It took both of them, bracing themselves against his shoulders, to keep him from attacking again.

"Yato, man, you can't kill him," Daikoku said urgently.

"Is someone going to call 911?" This was from the man on Yato's other side, helping Daikoku maintain a grip on his struggling form.

Yato cast his eyes wildly around the room, searching. His eyes landed on her two friends, who clutched each other, matching expressions of horror on their faces. The adrenaline in his body, thwarted in its initial outlet, was rapidly reducing him to a quivering mess.

There was a scuffle to Yato's right, and he jerked his head just in time to see Kazuma throwing his arms around a tall girl with silver-white hair. At first, he didn't comprehend what he was seeing, but then he realized Kazuma was restraining her from marching over and giving Fujisaki the rest of what Yato had already dished out. He held her back as she thrashed, unleashing a string of obscenities that raised hairs on the back of Yato's neck.

And then he saw Hiyori.

She was leaning against the wall, looking like her knees were about to buckle. Her eyes were no longer droopy and glazed over, but wide and shiny with panic. Her mouth hung slightly open, her lower lip trembling. He wished he were still punching Fujisaki.

The circle of people, none of whom Yato recognized, tightened around Fujisaki's motionless form, muttering among themselves about what to do next. Daikoku finally let go of his arms.

"Are you cool?" he asked. Yato nodded. He couldn't look anywhere but at Hiyori's small, blue-white face against the wall. He took a few steps in her direction, but her roommates converged on her before he could speak.

"You're okay," one of them said: sober, soothing. "He won't come near you."

Hiyori's eyes met Yato's, widening a bit more. The girl speaking to her turned her head slightly, and Yato saw in her face a cold, immovable rage that shook him.

She wasn't looking at him, though. Her glare was directed toward the huddle of people surrounding Fujisaki.

"How did he even get in?" The other girl had one arm around Hiyori's shoulders, and was intently chewing on her cuticles as her eyes flicked nervously between her friend and the cluster of people.

"I don't know…"

The other girl's voice trailed off, as the one with her arm around Hiyori finally noticed Yato standing nearby. He was being anything but subtle as he eavesdropped on their conversation.

"Hey! You!" She pointed a threatening finger at him.

Yato started backing away, holding his bruised knuckles behind his back and conjuring up an expression of innocent bewilderment. Before he could escape, she stalked over to him, grabbing him by the elbow with steel fingers, and steered him over to Hiyori.

"Make sure she doesn't puke or faint," she commanded. "We have to do damage control."

The other girl looked skeptical.

"Yama. He just punched a guy almost to death."

They both stared at him.

"Uh…" Yato faltered. He couldn't exactly deny it.

Hiyori, suddenly losing what remained of her balance, slumped farther down the wall. Without letting himself think, Yato wrapped an arm around her and hoisted her against him. Her head drooped onto his shoulder. Her breath, sweet from the sugary punch, came in shallow puffs against his neck.

He swallowed.

Yama observed this. Then she made a dismissive "yuh" at the back of her throat. Yato didn't know whether the noise was aimed at him, or at her friend's not completely inaccurate claim that he had nearly committed manslaughter.

"So what?" she said, waving a hand. "That slimy little shit deserved it."

"Yama."

"What?! He did!"

Ami shook her head, then pointed at the cluster of people. A couple of them were helping Fujisaki get off the floor. He seemed to have recovered consciousness enough to start swearing loudly and colorfully. Looking past them, Yato saw Kazuma still keeping a tight hold on the angry blonde, who regained some of her fighting spirit when she saw Fujisaki recovering.

"Get out!" she hollered. "Get out of this house before I fucking eviscerate you!"

Her eyes flashed like meteors, her silver hair nearly standing on end with outrage. There was pain in her voice, raw and chilling beneath the anger.

Then, out of nowhere, she burst into wild, unchecked sobs. She strained futilely against Kazuma as he tugged her back toward him.

"Jesus," Yato said under his breath. Yama and Ami stared with him, their jaws hanging open in identical expressions of shock.

Hiyori, roused somewhat by all the shouting, lifted her head. Yato looked at her just in time to see her squinting blearily at him before realization hit. Then, a broad smile erupted across her face.

"You caaame!" she said groggily.

The genuine delight in her voice made something in his chest swell ten times its normal size.

Immediately after recognizing him, Hiyori's head flopped back onto his shoulder and her whole body went limp. Yato leaned down and scooped his free arm under her knees, picking her completely up off the ground. Her head jostled against his collarbone, and she began, quietly, to snore.

While everyone's attention was still focused on the spectacle of the blonde girl, who was now weeping violently on Kazuma's shoulder, Yama turned back to Yato. Her upper lip twitched when she saw Hiyori, drooling and dead asleep in his arms.

"Can you just take her upstairs and put her to bed?" she asked him.

Yato's neck turned red. "Um," he mumbled.

A look of pure, joyful malice spread across Yama's face. "What? Don't you know where her bedroom is?"

Yato cleared his throat and opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Her Cheshire grin widened. "I thought you were together!" she crowed.

He spluttered helplessly. "Well—! It's not…we don't…"

He shut his mouth with a snap. Then he spun on one heel and began walking quickly away from her.

"Other way!" Yama cackled.

Humiliated, Yato did an about-face and headed for a dark, open archway in front of him that led up a short flight of stairs.

"Her room's at the end of the hall!" came Yama's final instructions, before she finally collapsed, wheezing with laughter.

Yato's ears burned as he stumbled up the dark stairs and into the narrow hall. Hiyori nuzzled her nose into the collar of his shirt, waking up a bit at the sensation of being carried.

"Uh?" she mumbled. "Yato?"

He stopped at the top of the stairs and swallowed. She wasn't at all heavy, but the smell and softness of her in his arms was rapidly becoming more than he could cope with.

"Hey," he said.

He felt Hiyori turn her head away from him, looking at their dim surroundings. The scuffle downstairs must have drawn most of the people from around the house, leaving them the only two in the hallway.

"Where'd we go?" she asked.

"Well, you're going to bed," Yato told her. He began walking toward the end of the hall. "Your tolerance is really something, you know that?"

Hiyori's head flopped back against his chest. "'M'not that drunk."

"Okay."

"Don'laugh at me!"

"I'm not!"

He felt Hiyori's sleepily accusatory glare through the shadows, and pried the grin off his face with some difficulty. The door to her room was closed, so he lowered her legs to the floor, keeping a solid grip around her waist so she remained upright.

As soon as he set her down, she began to make a strange sound.

Her breathing quickened, became uneven, and it was only when she gave deep, wet gasp did Yato realize she was crying.

"Oh. Oh no," he said.

"'M sorry." She sniffed loudly, productively, and reached up with one hand to try to pinch her nose so it wouldn't run. "I'm sorry," she repeated, and then immediately burst into heartbroken wails that Yato was sure would carry downstairs.

He stood, frozen in horror, and listened to her tears escalate. "No, no, oh no, no, it's okay!"

He hadn't the slightest idea what she was apologizing for. Asking her about it seemed like it would be the wrong move.

Hiyori kept crying, gasping out incoherent fragments of sentences as she clung to him. He attempted to soothe her while fumbling for the door handle, harboring an inexplicable hope that something inside the room might be able to calm her down.

The door swung open. For the first time, Yato saw Hiyori's bedroom: a place that had never presented itself as a concrete reality to him, but had heretofore only manifested in his consciousness as a vague, enchanting backdrop to his fantasies.

As it turned out, the bedroom was not large, but a comfortable enough size to house a bed, a desk, a lamp, and a small bookshelf that spilled its contents into haphazard, dog-eared piles on the purple carpet. The lamp had been left on, and cast a wide circle of dusty beige light.

Yato, of course, had imagined himself in this room before. At another time, he might have tried to memorize it, to carve into his mind the quirks and characteristics of the space that made it so inescapably _hers_.

However, he had never imagined himself here after breaking someone's nose, with a plastered, weeping Hiyori hanging off his shoulder.

A dull, knocking headache had moved in behind his left temple. His knuckles still rang with agony from their contact with Fujisaki's cheekbone. Yato knew he smelled like pizza grease and perspiration. To say that his first look at Hiyori's bedroom was unromantic would be like saying the Lava Hot Ghost Chili™ chips had a mild kick.

He gently lowered Hiyori onto the bed, and if he let his arm slide from behind her shoulders more slowly than he needed to, she wasn't in a state to notice. Her sobs were gradually abating into quiet, heartbroken whimpers. Finally, she fell silent, hiccuping every couple seconds.

Yato fidgeted. He had expected her to lie down and fall instantly asleep, and when it became obvious that wasn't going to happen, he was left standing awkwardly in front of her, waiting.

Hiyori hiccuped again. "I'm really sorry."

This time the words came out clearly articulated; she was obviously putting effort into communicating this to him. She looked so small, so sleepy, so utterly miserable. He couldn't bear it.

"What, Hiyori? What are you apologizing for? You don't have anything to be sorry about!"

He sat down on the bed next to her, and she turned her head to look at him, her eyes tracking his movements blearily. A stray piece of hair stuck to her lower lip. He wanted so, _so_ badly to push it back into place, and maybe his thumb would follow the soft ridge of her cheekbone, and maybe she would tilt her face into his hand, and her lips would brush his palm—

"I wanted you to have a good time here," Hiyori said, her voice warbling with imminent tears. "I didn't— _hic_ —didn't want anything bad to happen, because I know this whole—this thing"—she twirled her arms in a reckless spiral, nearly popping him in the nose—"is already inconv- _hic_ -enient for you, and I thought it might make up for a little of it if there was something fun too…but— _hic_ —but then F-Fuj—"

She stumbled on the name and stopped. Her chin and lower lip were quaking so hard her teeth chattered. It was an almost insurmountable challenge for Yato to not stalk downstairs and hit Fujisaki until his knuckles shattered.

Instead, he said: "I _did_ have a good time."

She looked at him, and smiled, but it was fragile and watery.

"Really?"

"Yes. Really. You need to go to sleep."

She shook her head. "Wait."

So he waited, studying her face. Exhaustion was truly starting to overtake her, weighing down on her eyelids until they were almost completely closed.

Hiyori's mouth started to form around her next words, then stopped. It looked like half of her was trying to say something, but the other half was already asleep.

"Can you not leave just yet?" she finally blurted out. Her eyes shot wide open, as though she shocked herself awake with her own request.

Yato blinked at her, uncomprehending. "You mean…you want me to go back to the party?"

"No." Hiyori shook her head vigorously.

Yato looked around the room, and something with a lot of legs began crawling around in his stomach.

"You mean…in here? In your room?"

Hiyori nodded. "Mmhmm."

Yato thought about work tomorrow. He thought about how ruthlessly Yukine would tease him for not coming back for a whole night.

He thought about Fujisaki: probably still downstairs, probably threatening imminent legal action against him.

He thought about how Hiyori's bedroom didn't lock from the inside.

He thought about how he was in this room, right now, sitting next to her, and how she was already drifting off against his shoulder, her face relaxing in sleep, and how if he just reached up his hand, he could so easily move away the piece of hair stuck to her mouth, and he thought about how she had just asked him to stay.

Yato eased himself off the bed, and Hiyori made a sleepy, disappointed noise that lodged in his chest. He lifted her legs onto the bed and pulled the folded blanket at the bottom up so it covered her up to her neck. He moved one of the pillows under her head, and after a few hesitant seconds, brushed the hair off her face. He didn't let his hand linger.

"You leaving?" she slurred out.

He sat down, his back against the side of the bed. He crossed his legs and leaned his head back onto the mattress. The back of his head bumped into her knee, and he closed his eyes.

"Of course not."

: : :

After a few minutes, Yato's eyes flew open.

He surfaced from sleep like a deep sea diver being hauled to the surface: shocked and blinded. The corners of his lips were dry, and his mouth tasted like iron. He blinked a few times, rubbing his gummy eyes, and sat up straight, groaning quietly as each of his cramped vertebrae made its complaints known.

The oppressive, stupefying silence of the house told him that it had not, in fact, been just a few minutes since he was awake.

Hiyori's hand swatted his ear again, and he suddenly realized why he'd woken so abruptly.

"Whaddisit," he mumbled around his dry, sandy tongue.

"Cold," Hiyori whined.

Yato craned his neck to look at her, and saw she had curled herself into a C-shape on the bed, facing his direction. Her knees were on one side of his head, her elbows on the other. Her face was completely buried in an appalling, matted clump of fuzz that Yato had to squint at for a minute before realizing it was her hair. She had indeed kicked off the blanket.

Yato rose from the floor, hissing as the blood in his legs woke, buzzing like drowsy mosquitoes. He grabbed the throw blanket from the bottom of the bed, where Hiyori had flung it in her sleep, and pulled it back over her. He tucked it carefully around her knees and feet, hopefully guarding against more acrobatics.

She was quiet as he did this. So quiet, and so still, that he thought she had drifted away already.

Yato wondered what the state of things was downstairs, whether he'd be able to sneak out and back to his own soft, empty bed.

He looked down at Hiyori. She slept like a cat, spine curved in a protective inward arch. Her chest contracted with slow, deep breaths. Her left hand was under her head, and the right—the one she had used to wake Yato—dangled over the side of the bed, wrist and fingers soft with sleep. He reached for it to move it under the blanket.

As soon as his fingers touched Hiyori's hand, her whole arm jerked like he'd sent an electric shock through her. Her hand wrapped tightly around his fingers, and she made a pitiful sound: something between a whine and a sob. Yato stiffened.

"Mmmmno," she murmured. Yato waited, but she said nothing more.

After a few seconds, he tried to pry her hand away, but her grip on him was white-knuckled, strangling his fingers until they ached. For a small, half-asleep, mostly-drunk girl, she was shockingly powerful.

"H-Hiyori," Yato rasped out. She didn't respond. "Hiyori," he tried again in a louder tone. She hummed, burrowing her head deeper into the crook of her elbow.

Yato stood there for what felt like a small eternity, his hand slowly going numb. Slowly—very slowly—her hand relaxed around his. He waited until her grip was loose enough for him to slide his fingers free, then carefully, carefully—

"No," Hiyori barked, making Yato jump. Her hand tightened around his fingers again, so tightly that he yelped.

"Hiyori—ow!"

"Then don' leave," she ordered sleepily. She was awake now, but clearly too incapacitated to do anything beyond holding him captive. Beneath the possum's nest of her hair, her eyes blinked blearily up at him. The hot, nervous flutter in Yato's chest stirred.

"You can let go," he said. "I won't leave."

Hiyori's silence communicated distrust.

Yato squeezed his thumb against her fingers. "Promise."

Hiyori didn't react at first. Then, slowly, her fingers loosened around his, and she withdrew her hand to burrow it beneath the blanket.

As Yato made to resume his uncomfortable post next to her bed, she made a soft, unhappy noise. He looked at her, concern etched into his chin and eyebrows.

"You okay?"

"Still cold," Hiyori whispered. Her voice shook slightly, and he leaned forward to see if she was all right, but her face was entirely hidden in her hair. Yato scanned the room for another blanket, but the creaking of the mattress snapped his attention back to Hiyori. She was inching herself closer to the wall, freeing space on the outside of the bed.

Yato stared at her, then at the bed.

"'M _cold_ ," she said meaningfully.

Yato blanched. He heard a broken, high-pitched wheeze, and after a few seconds he realized it was coming from his throat. The ringing in his ears crescendoed to a titanic roar.

"Oh," he said weakly. "I'm—are you—?"

Hiyori groaned with impatience. "Can you just get in?"

It was the most coherent—and the most annoyed—she'd been all night. Yato obediently clambered onto the bed, avoiding touching her and acutely, miserably aware of the warmth of the mattress where her body had lain. She shuffled closer to the wall to make room for him, and then she was still.

Yato thought, as he lay on the bed for the next few minutes, that for one person it was a comfortable size. But with two people…

Hiyori shifted on the mattress next to him and sighed. Yato swore he could feel her breath on his neck, even though she faced away from him. The sheets against his cheek were heavy with the scent of her skin and hair. He could feel the nearness of her, and it raised every hair on his arms and the back of his neck.

The bed was so damn small.

Suddenly, Hiyori giggled: a sleepy, warm sound that, ever so slightly, caused him to loosen the tense clamp of his teeth.

"Is this better than the floor?" she asked.

Yato snorted, then grinned. "You have no idea."

Within a few seconds, she was deeply unconscious. And five minutes later, Yato—after convincing himself that there was no fragment of a chance in hell, heaven, or anywhere in between—that he would be able to sleep in the same bed as Hiyori, was drooling happily onto her pillow, dreaming that he was swimming in a pool full of Lava Hot Ghost Chili™ chips.

: : :

The next time Yato opened his eyes, it was early morning. The light was cold and quartz-pink.

He was woken by a particularly noisy bird that had set up shop outside Hiyori's window, but as soon as he came to a partial realization of his surroundings, he was instantly alert.

Sometime in the night, Hiyori had pulled herself closer to him, and now they lay on their sides facing each other, torsos flush from shoulder to hip. Her legs were tangled in his, one of them bent and slung loosely over his thigh, the other between his legs. Her arms were folded at the elbow and pressed between their chests, one hand loosely fisted in his shirt. Her forehead was buried against his neck, and a clump of her hair had somehow gotten into his mouth.

Yato took stock of his own limbs, his pulse kicking in his throat like a frightened horse. One of his arms was draped over her waist, his fingertips brushing something soft and warm…something that was definitely _not_ fabric. Her shirt had ridden up during the night, and his fingertips trailed over the skin of her lower back. Her head rested on his other arm, cutting blood off to his hand. He tried to move those fingers, but his arm lay there like a sack of wet sand.

Hiyori was still fast asleep. Yato's arm, atop her ribs, rose in time with every slow, relaxed inhale. Her eyelids danced with movement, lashes trembling against her cheeks. She was dreaming.

Suddenly she gave a small groan, and burrowed her face deeper into his shoulder, her lips resting on the side of his neck, right above his shirt collar. She sighed, and her breath swept over his neck. On it, he smelled the vapors of the spiked punch from the night before, and the rank bitterness of deep sleep. Yato thought this could be what heaven smelled like.

This was not—this _could_ not be happening.

But the softness of her against his chest was intoxicatingly real, and warm, and heavy, and Yato thought that if he moved so much as a millimeter, his head would start spinning, and it might never stop.

So he lay still. He lay so perfectly, rigidly still that his lungs shivered, and a rim of bright black danced around the edges of his vision, and only then did he realize he was holding his breath. He released a silent, slow hiss of air through his teeth.

And then, after several moments of deliberation, he began the excruciating process of inching his body away from hers.

In the few minutes he had been awake, Yato had come to the only inevitable conclusion: Hiyori couldn't wake up in this position. Two inconvenient and mortifying things would happen if she woke up to find herself lying in his arms.

First, their carefully negotiated business arrangement would go south.

Second, she might find out he was in love with her.

With this horrific reality in his head, Yato gained maybe five centimeters of distance before Hiyori's eyes shot open.

Before all his facilities of higher logic abandoned their posts, he noticed that she looked remarkably alert for someone who had just woken up.

There was a long, long, _long_ silence.

"My leg's asleep," she croaked.

At the same time, Yato said, "My arm's asleep."

Then there was another silence: shorter, but exponentially more uncomfortable. Hiyori's wide eyes were only inches from his, and her face was slowly turning the color of a healthy radish.

The next few seconds were a blur. Yato was lying down, and then suddenly he was standing up, pulling his shoes onto the wrong feet and tripping, thick-tongued, over an alphabet soup of apologies and excuses. Before Hiyori had time to respond, he was on the other side of the bedroom door. Propelled by the numb inertia of shock, he stumbled out of the house and back to his own.

He had the vague impression that both Yukine and Kazuma tried to speak to him when he entered, but he floated past, wrapped in a cloud of mute euphoria. His legs didn't seem to belong to him, but they carried him obligingly into his room. He sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, waiting for his heart to sink back into place.

He was…happy.

Then he fell backwards on the bed, arms splaying to either side, and he laughed.

He was utterly, stupidly happy, and it terrified him.


	7. The Karaoke

Hiyori stared at page 449 of her textbook for half an hour, scanning the same two sentences over and over with glassy, unseeing eyes.

A knock on her door startled her out of her stupor. When she called a welcome, Ami cracked the door open a few inches. Her glasses reflected the sterile blue of Hiyori's desk lamp, making her look a bit like a sinister scientist.

"How goes the cramming?"

Hiyori looked down at the page of her notebook, which was covered in eyeballs. Not literal, squishy eyeballs, but sketchy doodles of eyes that her hand had been creating absently while her mind wandered.

"The cramming goes shittily."

Ami hummed in sympathy. Then she was silent, but she didn't close the door, obviously lingering to say something else. Hiyori spun around in her old, squeaky swivel chair.

"Something on your mind?" she asked pointedly.

Ami opened the door a fraction wider, but still didn't step into the room.

"Just thinking…maybe you should get out for a bit. Do something besides study."

Hiyori pinched her eyebrows together with a thumb and forefinger. "God, it must be bad if _you're_ telling me to go out and be social."

Ami didn't seem to take offense to the comment. Instead, she continued standing silently in the doorway. A surge of irritation rushed up Hiyori's throat.

"Can you spit it _out_?!"

She hadn't finished speaking before she regretted the harsh tone, and her head drooped with penitence. Ami cleared her throat softly.

"Oh, nothing," she said. "Just that he's here."

Hiyori's head snapped up again. Ami could only mean—

"The delivery guy," she clarified, holding up two plastic bags of takeout as evidence.

Hiyori melted back into her chair, weak with both disappointment and relief. After that damn party, she wasn't sure she could look Yato in the eye without fainting from humiliation.

"Thanks," she said without enthusiasm, and reached for one of the bags. Ami pulled her arm back, dangling the food—which smelled mouth-wateringly of broccoli and beef—out of reach.

"My credit card was declined," she said. Hiyori stared at her in disbelief.

"So...you want me to…?" She trailed off, hoping Ami would show a modicum of shame.

Ami's shoulders hinted at a shrug, but didn't quite make it all the way. "Sorry."

Hiyori dragged herself out of her desk chair, stomping past Ami and down the stairs to the front door, where the delivery-person was, apparently, still waiting for payment. The door wasn't completely closed, so she flung it all the way open. And then she nearly swallowed her tongue.

"Yato—!" she gasped.

He was dressed in a stained, dubiously gray uniform, and stood with one arm awkwardly extended, holding the electronic card reader in front of him. They stood like that for several seconds.

"You deliver Chinese food?" she blurted stupidly.

Yato didn't answer for a half-second, his jaw still hanging slightly ajar. Then he inhaled quickly, as though just realizing she had asked him a question.

"Yeah. I got—uh—kind of fired from my other job."

Hiyori covered her mouth with one hand. "Oh no!"

He shrugged awkwardly with one shoulder. "It happens. Apparently 'repeatedly missing shifts' and 'stealing product' is not smiled upon in the pizza industry. Plus I smelled like pepperoni twenty-four-seven."

"Well, now you're just gonna smell like MSG!"

At that, Yato grinned. Then he realized he was still holding the card reader out, and quickly lowered his arm. The movement jogged Hiyori's memory, and she pulled out her wallet and rummaged through it for a card.

"Right. How much?"

She brandished a credit card, only to be met with a blank look.

"Huh?"

"The credit card," Hiyori prodded. "Ami's didn't work?"

Yato stared at her in vacant confusion. "No, it worked. It's all paid. She said she had to go grab some cash for a tip."

Sudden understanding punched through the top of her skull. Hiyori half-turned her back to Yato, of a mind to find Ami and box her ears.

"Oh, that _little—"_ she fumed, before clamping her teeth onto her tongue and forcing herself to smile prettily at him.

"Of course. Sorry. Um. I guess I should…tip you, then?"

Yato's mouth shaped several silent syllables before he managed to get any sound out.

"Oh. N-no, I mean, it's fine! I just—it felt rude to just leave, so—"

Hiyori stuttered for a second, before an immediate, searing realization folded her gut in half.

"I haven't paid you!" she cried.

Yato stopped with his mouth open, halfway through his string of excuses. Hiyori thought she was sweating much more than was necessary, and had to stifle the urge to fan her damp forehead with both hands.

"For the—the _other_ thing," she said, dropping her voice just in case Ami—Judas that she was—might be lurking somewhere in earshot.

He shrugged again, though the pause before it was just long enough to be suspicious.

"It's…y'know, whatever," he said, obviously wanting to just get out of this conversation as quickly as possible.

The sweat on Hiyori's forehead was starting to drip down her temples. Feverish with discomfort, she dug through her wallet again for her checkbook.

"I know we didn't discuss payment or anything, but, um—"

She scribbled three figures on the check, signed it messily, and thrust it toward his chest, hoping she hadn't already smeared the ink with her clammy hands. Yato stared at the check for a moment, then gingerly took it from her. His eyes were frozen to the total scrawled on the front.

If he didn't say something soon, Hiyori was going to cry.

"Je- _sus_ ," he breathed.

Oh god, she'd insulted him.

"It's negotiable," Hiyori gasped. She eyed the pen in her hand, wondering if it was sharp enough for her to use to commit seppuku.

Yato's eyes traveled, slowly, from the check up to hers.

"Negotiation isn't necessary," he said. "But…this is a _lot_. Are you sure?"

Hiyori nodded vigorously. "Please. You've helped me so much. I really can't thank you enough."

It seemed to take Yato some effort to pocket the check, and even when he did, his posture was very subtly altered, as though there were something sharp poking him in the spine. He was quiet for a few more seconds. Something started to push at the bottom of Hiyori's stomach, worming its way up her throat like an eel.

"Thanks," Yato said. After another half-second he remembered to smile, but the strain of his facial muscles looked unnatural.

The pressure in Hiyori's throat quickly became unbearable. If she opened her lips she was going to either puke or scream. She turned back to the open doorway, hoping to put some distance between herself and Yato before she did either of those things.

"Hiyori!" he cried.

She stopped, halfway inside the house. She couldn't look at him, but the writhing in her throat subsided.

"Yes?"

He cleared his throat loudly.

"I just—I wanted to make sure you were okay, after that night, but I wasn't sure that—I didn't know if…"

It sounded like he was forcing the words out with something heavy sitting on his chest. His voice finally trailed away, and after a moment of collecting herself, Hiyori turned back to him. Her cheeks and eyes felt warmer than usual.

"Yes. I'm fine."

Yato's eyes narrowed.

"I'm fine," she repeated with more conviction. "Really. Thank you."

His lower lip twisted, but he managed to turn it into a slight smile.

"Good."

It could have been a moment for her to go back inside, for him to walk away.

Could have, but wasn't.

Yato scratched the back of his neck. "Oh," he said. "I was also going to ask: has anyone…caused trouble for you since then?"

Hiyori's eyelid twitched. Fujisaki hadn't surfaced since the episode at the party, but the mere thought of him becoming litigious towards Yato made her head pound. She felt sick with worry that he was, even then, brewing something awful in revenge.

But she hadn't warned Yato. She hadn't offered any help at all. Her own cowardice made her feel ill.

Yato misread the tortured expression on her face, and his expression darkened in anger.

"No!" Hiyori said quickly. "No. No one's caused any trouble for me. But Yato, you shouldn't have attacked him. That was so stupid!"

Yato looked like she'd shoved electrodes into his chest. He took a step back, and Hiyori's hands twitched after him. She sputtered miserably.

"I-I mean. I appreciated it, of course. A lot! So much. Um."

He looked like he wanted to speak, but she blathered on.

"And I mean, if we're talking in terms of stupid things we did, I did…um. Stuff that was stupid. Definitely. So it's not like I can really scold you for punching somebody."

She shook her head even harder, and fought the urge to clutch her ears.

"Except I _am_ —because he could hurt you, Yato! Do you know how powerful that family is?! And you broke his nose! He deserved it, yes, but…you can't! You can't go around punching horrible people's noses. Because sometimes those horrible people's noses are attached to just…just a _whole_ _lot_ of money. And lawyers."

She was extemporizing to the ground at Yato's feet. For some time now she had been at the mercy of her mouth, waiting for the stream of fragmentary nonsense to run dry. At last, it did.

"Money and lawyers," she trailed off in a whisper.

Yato made a funny sound in his throat, like he was gargling wasps. Hiyori's eyes flicked to his face for a second, and saw in it a sort of tortured resolve that bewildered her.

"It's fine," he said, quickly composing himself. Hiyori was about to say that it wasn't fine, and that he ought to consider what kind of damage both money and lawyers could do to him, but then he said:

"Do you like karaoke?"

She frowned. Maybe he'd misheard her.

"Do I what?"

"Do you like karaoke," he repeated slowly.

Hiyori tried to remember the last time she'd done karaoke. Certainly not in the last several years.

"Um," she said. Yato must have seen the question mark hovering above her head.

"I was just going to say that there are a few people I know who are going tonight. And I just wanted to know if you liked karaoke, and if you wanted to come."

He said it all in one breath, so quickly that Hiyori almost couldn't process it. Taking a few beats to untangle his meaning, she felt her ears catch fire.

"Oh."

Yato blinked, his face pale and sweating. He looked like she had him on some medieval torture device, ratcheting up the agony with each silent second.

"People?" she repeated, hesitantly.

"Friends," he hurried to supply. "My friends. You met Daikoku before. He and his girlfriend Kofuku were at the party, but you probably didn't see her. I've known them forever."

"Oh," she said, in revelation. "A couple."

Yato was so white that he could have passed for a corpse, and judging by the expression on his face, he would have found that state of existence preferable.

"Yep," he choked.

Hiyori couldn't find her tongue.

What was he asking, exactly? Was this another building block in the pyramid of falsehoods that made up their "relationship."

"Oh, and Yukine will be there too. Actually—he's the one who told me to invite you." Yato laughed uncomfortably. "I think he might have a tiny crush, to be honest."

Hiyori's stomach did a nasty somersault. Her eyes stung fiercely. "Ah."

The door opened behind her, and Ami poked her head out. Both of them jumped at the intrusion. Yato dropped the card reader he was still holding, and it clattered against the sidewalk.

"Did you get kidnapped?" Ami asked. "Food's getting cold."

"No! Sorry. I'm just…" Hiyori trailed off, watching as Yato picked up the card reader, straightened, didn't look at her. She turned to Ami.

 _Two minutes,_ she mouthed. She smiled, praying her face didn't look unnatural. Ami squinted.

Hiyori widened her eyes. _Please._

"Okayyy," Ami said suspiciously. "But I'm picking out all the best pieces if you take too much longer."

She shut the door with a severe bang. Hiyori gathered her wits.

"Yeah, I'd love to come along!" she said exuberantly. She winced as her fake-bubbly voice shot up an octave. "It sounds fun!"

Yato raised his head. "It…does?" A shade of color was coming back to his cheeks.

"Yeah! Totally!"

Her mood swing was giving both of them whiplash. Hiyori couldn't handle the insane false cheerfulness that had her in its grip. She grinned like an effervescent demon. She giggled like a cheerleader on speed.

"Great," he said cautiously. "I'll…let you know when we're leaving?"

Hiyori bounced on her heels, smiling a deranged smile. "Yep! Awesome!"

Yato started backing away from the house. Hiyori couldn't blame him. He smiled back, his eyes a little terrified. "Okay, um. See you later."

"Uh huh! Great!"

Hiyori spun around and fumbled for the doorknob, hoping to exorcise whatever had possessed her by cutting herself off from any more human interaction. Slamming the door behind her, she found Ami on the other side of it, regarding her clinically over a plastic bowl of Chinese takeout.

"Please," Hiyori moaned. "Please. Don't say whatever you're about to say."

Ami innocently pondered the broccoli beef between her chopsticks. "I wasn't going to say anything."

"Good."

"Good."

There was silence, punctuated only by the raucous gallop of Hiyori's pulse.

"So." Ami popped the beef into her mouth and spoke around it. "How're your karaoke skills these days?"

Hiyori straightened her spine, cast her friend a withering glare, and stomped up the stairs. She would spend the next three hours staring at her phone, failing to convince herself that the hollowness in her chest was normal, that it was nothing, that she was fine, just fine.

: : :

Following the instructions from Yato's text, Hiyori arrived at a tiny building hiding between a bustling beauty supply store and an equally bustling porn emporium.

She walked inside to see three people waiting for her. One of them was Yato. The other man she recognized from the umbrella store. The third was a tiny woman with a bubblegum pink bob, who squealed as soon as Hiyori walked in, and flung herself into her arms.

"It's _so_ good to _meet_ you!" she said rapturously. "I thought Yato was lying about having other friends, but you're so _real_ and _pretty_!"

Hiyori laughed nervously. "It's—um—nice to meet you too?" She cast a helpless glance at Yato over the top of the girl's pink head.

"This is Kofuku," was all the explanation he provided, as though this happened all the time. The "pretty" comment did turn his cheeks a bit pinker than usual.

Kofuku released Hiyori from her stranglehold, though she did attach herself firmly to her elbow as they got their drinks and were escorted to a small, bench-lined room by an employee wearing a T-shirt that proclaimed "UNDERWORLD" in bold, dripping red font across the chest.

"This is an…interesting place?" Hiyori observed. The memory of the porn emporium next door was still technicolor in her memory.

"They couldn't get an alcohol license here," Kofuku said brightly. "So it's almost always empty. And cheap!"

Hiyori looked mournfully at what she now realized must be a virgin mojito, and sighed. Behind her, Yato chuckled.

"Trust me, you won't need alcohol to enjoy hearing her butcher Madonna," he said. Kofuku let go of Hiyori's arm long enough to smack his shoulder.

Daikoku growled: "My woman's got the voice of an angel."

"Yeah!" Yato said gleefully. "The angel of death!"

Hiyori laughed at that: a loud, undignified snort that, after it escaped, seemed to echo in the room. She slapped a hand over her mouth, mortified.

The other three looked at her for a second. Then Kofuku squealed, clasping Hiyori so tightly in her arms that she swore two of her ribs cracked.

"You're so, so, so _so_ adorable! I just wanna squeeze you into my pocket and take you _everywhere—!"_

Yato began scrolling through song options, and Daikoku sipped broodingly on his drink. Neither of them offered to help her. As she turned steadily bluer in Kofuku's embrace, Hiyori had a revelation.

"Hey," she wheezed. "Where's Yukine?"

Yato glanced up from the song list. "He said he was busy again."

Daikoku frowned sadly. "Aw, damn. I like that kid."

"He's been acting so shady recently," Yato complained. "Why are teenagers like this? I thought he wanted to hang out with Hiyori, but then all of a sudden he has 'botany assignments' and 'study partners,' and then he's ditching me to go to the 'library,' and—"

"Sounds like he's just being a responsible kid," Daikoku pointed out. Yato sulked.

"I didn't _tell_ him he could do that."

"You're not his dad."

Yato bristled. "Well…I feed him!"

"Day-old pizza and ramen is not a balanced diet for a growing boy."

Hiyori, overcome with curiosity, interrupted their disagreement.

"Wait," she said. "Where _are_ Yukine's parents?"

Yato's mouth was open to make some retort, but he shut it again. He shrugged, almost nonchalant.

Almost.

"No idea," he said.

There was a second of silence. Hiyori's eyes darted from Yato, to Daikoku, to Kofuku. There was a secret here she was being shut out of, and she wasn't sure how hard she could press before her prying struck too deep a nerve.

"So…you're basically his caretaker," she stated to Yato. He shrugged again.

"More or less."

Hiyori's chest squeezed tight and hot with sudden, inexplicable grief. "Oh."

Something in her voice made Yato look back at her. When he saw her stricken expression, his attitude flipped 180 degrees.

"Hey," he said loudly. "This sure is a bummer conversation! Can we sing yet?"

Kofuku cheered and grabbed a mic. Yato reached for the other, but Daikoku snatched it away with a smooth, lightning-quick motion.

"You gonna take the first duet with my woman?" he said menacingly. Hiyori had no idea whether the threat in his voice were real or playful.

She wasn't sure Yato knew either. He threw his hands up in surrender.

At that, a wide grin spread across Daikoku's face. He guffawed, slapping Yato's back with such thunderous force that he was nearly driven face-first into the table. Hiyori winced.

"Agh," Yato groaned, giving a weak thumbs-up. "Funny."

The music started. Kofuku had chosen a syrupy, woeful Lady Antebellum song that she and Daikoku lumbered through with more enthusiasm than skill. Yato's earlier statement proved true: by the end of the song, Hiyori was dissolving in giggles at Kofuku's death-defying commitment to the drawn-out, yearning notes.

As the doomed duet drew to a very flat close, she found her shoulder being tapped. At some point during Kofuku and Daikoku's performance, Yato had scooted along the couch to sit nearer to her.

"You wanna go?" he asked.

She nodded, and took the song selection device from his hands. Their thighs brushed, and heat crept from her collarbones up her neck. She scrolled quickly through the song options, trying to distract herself from the warmth of his leg.

"Which one?" she asked helplessly. She couldn't parse the blur of songs on the screen with Yato sitting so close to her.

Kofuku collapsed on her other side, leaning on her shoulder to browse the titles.

"Ooh! This one! Sing this one!" She snatched the screen and poked a button.

The song began to play. Hiyori choked.

"No. _No._ "

"Come ooon," Kofuku whined piteously. The corners of her rosebud mouth turned down when Hiyori balked. "You _have_ to sing this one, for me. Please?"

Blushing up to her ears, Hiyori slowly stood up and took the microphone.

"Okay," she said, heavy with reluctance. "But…it won't be good."

The song's intro was building to a crescendo. Soon, she would have to sing.

She met Yato's eyes by accident. He was grinning broadly—no doubt anticipating her failure—and something hot and hungry in her awoke.

She wanted nothing more than to wipe that smug look off his face.

She lifted the mic.

" _I think I did it again."_

Hiyori didn't recognize the voice that came out of her. Sultry, seductive.

 _Britney_.

She only struggled with a few of the lower notes, and finished to an insane round of applause, mostly provided by Kofuku. Daikoku smiled his approval, which made him seem much more like the gentle young man he was, rather than a hired gun. Yato looked like he was going to pass out. He was sitting motionless, mouth agape, too shaken to even clap. Kofuku elbowed him in the ribs, and he finally joined the applause, though it still seemed like a stiff wind might knock him over.

"Are you okay?" Hiyori asked, sitting back down. She was a bit breathless, but her head was light with elation.

"Uh," he said. His voice was airy, like the breath after a punch. "Who—Where did you—? You can _sing?"_

She giggled. It was nice to have surprised him. Too nice.

"I think that was just a good song for my range," she admitted. "But…thank you. I assume that was a compliment?"

Yato was still staring at her, slackjawed. Then he nodded silently, at a loss for words. A blush climbed into her cheeks.

"Well." She cleared her throat. "It's your turn now. What are you going to do to show me up?"

As soon as she said that, his persona shifted. He plucked the microphone from her loose grip, and reached over to snatch the song selection device from Kofuku, who was threatening Daikoku with another sappy duet. As he reached behind her, his arm grazed the back of her neck, raising a host of goosebumps across her neck and arms. Hiyori swallowed.

"You'll see," Yato said quietly.

As soon as he pressed the button, Freddie Mercury's rich, soaring voice broke on their ears.

 _"Caaaan…anybody…."_

"Oh god, no," Daikoku groaned.

" _Fiiind meeee…"_

Yato stood up.

 _"Somebody to…"_

He looked straight at Hiyori, and his mouth twitched.

" _Loooooove?"_

The piano began. And then Yato started to sing.

She had to admit that he was a natural performer, though his falsetto was rocky at best. He had a surprisingly pleasant, deep voice, which resonated with something in the pit of her stomach that she didn't entirely trust.

He committed utterly to the spirit of the piece, and by the end was lying supine on the floor, kicking one leg feebly in the air as he warbled the last few notes in a dying voice that was only a distant cousin to the song's key signature.

As soon as he finished, Hiyori burst into applause, quickly joined by Kofuku's enthusiastic cheers. Daikoku's face was dark red with suppressed laughter, and Hiyori suspected he was enjoying the spectacle of Yato making a fool of himself more than anything else the night could bring him.

Yato flung himself back onto the couch next to her, his face shiny with exertion.

"Very nice," Hiyori said sincerely. "Though I don't think you were supposed to try and sing backup vocals along with yourself."

He grinned, unperturbed by her critique. "I like a challenge."

Daikoku's ears perked up.

"Oh yeah? You up for some Underoath, dude?"

Yato paled. "Do…do they _have_ anything by Underoath?"

Hiyori, who had taken charge of the song selection, shook her head.

"No, but they do have a whole lot of Simon & Garfunkel. Like…too much. And _one_ Katy Perry song. Have they updated this since 2009?"

"Which Katy Perry song?" Kofuku asked brightly.

" _I Kissed a Girl."_

"Ooh!" Kofuku squealed. "I wanna do that one. Gimme."

: : :

Hiyori couldn't believe it when Daikoku glanced at his watch and yawned.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"9:30."

Yato scoffed. "What are you, 80?"

Daikoku glowered at him, but before he could retort, Kofuku turned white and clasped both hands over her mouth.

"Oh no," she whispered. "I just remembered. I think…I think I left the oven on."

Yato groaned. Daikoku lowered his head into his hands.

"I'm sorry!" she wailed. "I'm so sorry! I don't even know why I was _using_ it!"

Daikoku stood up, shaking his head in mild disappointment. "Well…I guess we're heading home now. If it's still standing, that is."

Yato slumped back on the couch, and as he did so, his elbow overlapped Hiyori's. She tried not to react, but the effort to keep herself from shivering at the contact was monumental.

"Don't worry," he muttered to her out of the corner of his mouth. "She does this a lot. It's usually a false alarm."

Hiyori's eye twitched. "Usually?"

Kofuku allowed herself to be pacified, receiving repeated assurances from the other three that the oven was probably not on, that the house was probably not ripe with combustive gas. However, she and Daikoku still made movements to leave.

"We were supposed to have the room for another hour," Kofuku said. "So you two stay and get your money's worth."

Then she looked at Hiyori. Somehow, without either of the men noticing, Kofuku shot her a bold, saucy wink.

Hiyori's stomach dropped. She suddenly harbored doubts as to whether the oven had actually been left on.

"Um," she said.

"Okay!" Yato broke in, more than enthusiastic to take up the offer. "We'll sing enough for both of you." He turned to her, and the joy on his face was so infectious that Hiyori thought it would be outright cruel to puncture it.

"Sure," she said. Then, after a moment of hesitation: "It was really great to meet both of you."

She meant it. There was something almost familial about how the two of them had immediately welcomed her as Yato's friend. She gave Kofuku a warm hug, and had her shoulder affectionately patted by Daikoku.

"Nice singing," he said sincerely, and Hiyori beamed.

As the couple left the room, Kofuku shot one more mischievous, meaningful smile over her shoulder. Yato caught a glimpse of Hiyori's expression, and he raised an eyebrow.

"Something wrong?"

"No," she said, too quickly. Searching for a distraction, she punched a random song on the screen. As soon as the opening notes played, she and Yato exchanged a look of wide-eyed terror.

"Oh man," he said. Hiyori scanned the screen for a "skip" button, but the programmers had cleverly hidden it in an obscure corner. Before she could conduct a more thorough search, Yato grabbed her wrist.

"We can't skip it," he said earnestly. "That's cheating!"

"You can't _cheat_ at karaoke—" Hiyori protested, but he wasn't listening.

 _"I got chiiills."_ His voice cracked badly, but he soldiered on. Hiyori winced. John Travolta, Yato was not.

" _They're multiplyin'. And I'm looosing control."_

He grabbed her hand, dragging her up from the sofa. She yelped as he swung her in a circle, then pushed the other mic into her hand. Hiyori shook her head, though a grin tugged at her lips.

 _"You better shape up,"_ she sang—cautiously at first, then louder as her confidence grew. " _'Cuz I need a man, and my heart is set on you."_

Yato was doing some sort of upper body wiggle that made it seem like he was dislocating his shoulders. Hiyori burst into laughter, losing the tune. He picked it up again, and somehow they blundered through the chorus. At one point, they abandoned the melody entirely, instead resorting to shouts of _"ooh, ooh, ooh, HONEY"_ at random intervals.

Hiyori was weak with laughter by the time the song ended. Yato was sweating, and his hair was wild from all the disco he'd just put it through.

"How have I never done this before?" she marveled, trying to catch her breath.

"Because you needed a cool, hip friend to take you!" he said.

Hiyori turned her gaze on him, and saw that he was one hundred percent serious. Her cheeks warmed.

"I think you might be right."

She put him in charge of the song selection after that, because she didn't trust herself to not pick something that would embarrass both of them. Yato was no better at choosing appropriately, as Hiyori discovered upon finding herself trying to carry the tune of _"Eternal Flame"_ a few seconds later. He was belting out the operatic backup vocals, with only a passing nod to intonation.

After butchering The Bangles, Hiyori sank onto the bench again, her throat sore with laughter.

"Aren't we almost out of time?" she asked, half-regretfully.

"Just one more?" Yato sank into a crouch in front of her, his eyes wide and pleading. "Please?"

She tested her throat and winced. "I'm not sure I _can_. My karaoke stamina is not nearly as impressive as yours."

At that moment, one of the employees poked her head in.

"Um. You guys have to leave soon. We're closing."

She stared with open curiosity around the humid little room and the two disheveled, sweaty people who had obviously been occupied in some sort of strenuous activity for the last half hour.

"Are you…" The employee cleared her throat self-consciously. "What have you been _doing_ in here?"

Hiyori took in her expression, the state of the room, the state of herself—

"Oh!" she cried out. " _Oh_. Oh no. We're…we're done. Sorry. We'll leave."

Yato however, was still caught up in the spirit of karaoke. He grabbed her wrist before she could set down the mic.

"One more?" he begged. "I promise it'll be great."

Hiyori cast a helpless glance at the UNDERWORLD employee, who shrugged and withdrew—probably to report to her manager about acquiring a hazmat suit to clean the room after they were through.

"I'm not kidding, Yato," she said. "My voice is shot to hell."

"That's okay," he reassured her. "This'll be my solo."

Apprehensively, Hiyori watched him pick the final song. As soon as it began to play, she couldn't restrain a bark of laughter.

"Are you serious?" she asked incredulously.

"It's a grand finale!"

"Yeah, but—"

It was too late; the chorus to _"I Will Always Love You"_ had arrived, and Yato was giving it his all.

His all, in this case, happened to be an unholy screech. His raw, overtaxed voice couldn't handle the strain of keeping up with Whitney's extraordinary vocals. The auditory effect came closest to the cacophony of sixteen cats being disemboweled, and was enough to summon the manager of UNDERWORLD to kick them out of the room.

"Well, that was rude," Yato said in a hurt voice, once they had been unceremoniously hustled outside. Hiyori was still holding her stomach and trying to breathe through stitches of laughter.

"I think you did break their sound system, though," she wheezed. Yato frowned, clearly displeased with how the management of the place had treated his artistic endeavors.

Once she'd recovered her wind, Hiyori looked around the dark, nearly abandoned street. Her car was the only one in sight.

"Did you walk here?" she asked in disbelief.

"Oh, no." He winced and scratched the back of his neck. "Daikoku and Kofuku drove. I…forgot about that. Whoops."

"Well, I'm headed in the right direction." She shot a sideways grin at him and jingled her keys.

"Need a lift?"


End file.
